Saints and Sinners
by Jessica Marsh
Summary: Kae Luka is an average Coruscanti citizen: she has a decent job as a detective for the CSF, a pazaak habit, a kooky roommate. But this all changes when she is sent on an job to stop a local smuggling ring that quickly turns into a hunt across the galaxy.
1. A new assignment

CORUSCANT SECURITY FORCE: USCRU SECTOR, USCRU ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT

CORUSCANT, CORE WORLDS

Kae tugged off her helmet and tucked it onto the top shelf of her durasteel locker. Sweat made her dark hair cling to her scalp, itchy and damp, but she ignored it, unzipping her thick combat vest. Just as she was going to hang it on the lower half of the locker, a voice echoed in the cavernous room, bouncing off the bare walls.

"Detective. Chief wants to talk to you."

She glanced over her shoulder to see her partner standing behind her, still wearing his uniform. "What? Why? Did he say?" she asked. She was unconcerned why the chief wanted to see her; the constant nagging threat of being laid off vanished long ago—actually, about three years before, when she had been promoted from officer to detective.

Ben shook his head. "Nope, but it seemed important. I offered to bring the message myself, but he wouldn't have it. Better run up there before he gets antsy."

"Thanks, Benny," she said, and quickly tugged off her armoured trousers and heavy combat boots. Less than two minutes later, with a fresh white tunic and comfortable beige trousers on, Kae was ready to meet with the chief. She patted Ben's shoulder as she passed him, leaving the locker room behind.

On-duty officers, forensics specialists, secretaries, and paparazzi from HoloNet News all littered the wide hallways of the station. Several people nodded quick greetings to Kae as she passed them, but for the most part she kept her face down, trying to ignore the excitable rookies of the station and demanding journalists from HNN.

She melted into a group of nicely dressed dignitaries—probably men and women from other stations in Galactic City—and stepped into the open space of a glass elevator. The pleasant music was drowned out by the babble of multiple different accents and intonations all bubbling together. Kae sighed to herself, pressed against the edge of the elevator by the door, and watched with mild interest as the Coruscanti sun vanished below the metal horizon. A truly beautiful and magnificent sight, wasted on the spoiled rich in their penthouse apartments who wouldn't even appreciate it.

The elevator stopped with a quiet ding, and Kae shoved through the bustling crowd to reach the chief's office. His was at the end of a long, foreboding hallway; the walls were lined with glass, but the inner shades were down, blocking her view of his office. She hesitated as she stopped before it, and took a moment to collect herself before pressing her finger on a keypad beside the door.

"Detective Luka?" an electronically amplified voice spoke up, and an image of the Human chief fizzled to life on the screen above the keypad.

"Yes, sir."

"Enter."

The door shot upwards with a hiss, and Kae stepped into the huge glass office. A beautiful desk, dark cherry wood imported from Dathomir, faced her and the door, with the back to the beautiful sunset. Behind it, seated in a plush armchair was the head of the Uscru Entertainment District police force. Lined and speckled hands folded together on the desk, he was smiling at her with his head tilted to the side, his thin salt-and-pepper hair falling over his tall forehead. Dark eyes sparkled in the pleasant florescent glow of the office.

Kae strode across the tile floor and seated herself opposite him, in an oxblood armchair similar to his. "Ben Jurhic said you needed to see me, sir," she said, leading straight into it.

Lines deepened around his mouth as his smile widened. "Indeed, Detective. I have a special assignment for you, if you're interested."

Her brows shot up beneath her messy fringe. "What assignment?"

"Several owners of businesses under our protection have filed reports of complaints," he began, drumming his fingers lightly on the desktop, "and they think they've got a bit of a spice smuggling problem going on. I had Watson look into it, but he didn't get very far—and now that his wife is having the baby, I need someone else to head it. That's where you come in. We have a few leads, but not enough to begin a manhunt. Are you interested?"

Kae perked up as soon as she heard the words 'spice smuggling.' "Yeah, of course I am."

"I thought so." The chief reached into one of the drawers of his imported desk and pulled out a datapad. "Here. This is all the information Watson found on the smuggling ring. Like I said, it really isn't much, but it might be able to help out some. I'll leave the planning to you, Detective. I know you're capable."

"Thank you, sir."

"But a word of advice?"

Kae looked up from the datapad and eyed him expectantly.

"Go undercover. I'm sure you know that smuggling rings won't show up if there's a cop in uniform hanging around the place, but I'd have been a bad chief if I didn't warn you. I'll have you excused from your regular rounds with Officer Jurhic. You start first thing after the weekend."

"Thank you, sir," she said again, smiling warmly. "Is that all you needed?"

"Yes. You can go home now." He smiled and waved slightly, then returned his attention to a large datapad on his desk.

Kae stood and shuffled from the office. The door hissed shut behind her, and she smiled to herself, datapad in hand, as she began the hike to the elevator that would take her to the taxis.


	2. A night at the usual haunt

TAEG'S PAZAAK DEN, USCRU ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT

CORUSCANT, CORE WORLDS

A hand thumped on her back as she stepped into the musty, buzzing atmosphere of the pazaak den. She grinned, and the huge Wookiee bouncer barked at her in an excited manner. The silver plated droid beside him twisted toward her and announced in an electronic, but personable, voice, "Good evening yet again, Kaekoletai! Graalbacc and I are most delighted to see you again."

She laughed and patted the droid's cool metal arm. "Me too. It's been too long. Got any decent tables going?" she asked, moving to the side to let a few other curious patrons into the room.

The Wookiee watched the newcomers warily, sparkling brown eyes narrowed, then growled something with a little nudge to Kae's arm. She glanced over her shoulder as the droid said, "Graalbacc says that there are a few tables worth investigating, though the most exciting and profitable seems to be table eighteen. Taeg himself has been around to investigate it often, making sure nobody has trick cards in their sleeves. Graalbacc," it added as the Wookiee purred again, "recommends playing the other tables first before deciding to try table eighteen. The Human man playing has not lost a game in two hours."

Kae scowled in the direction of table eighteen. "Oh, he's got to be cheating. Nobody wins for that long."

"Guard your purse, Kaekoletai. Taeg has yet to catch him cheating."

"I'll keep that in mind, thanks. Has Lees'anah showed up yet?"

The droid ceased all movement for a long moment as it scanned its memory banks. Something processed with a whir, and it said, "Yes, he arrived about fifteen minutes ago and went straight for the bar."

"Thanks, boys. See you later." She waved to the Wookiee and his droid counterpart, and wound past the excitedly chattering newcomers to reach the bar arching over the far corner of the club. Old metal stools followed the smooth arc of the old, pitted bar, and one was inhabited by a startlingly crimson Lethan Twi'lek. He was hunched over the bar, making idle conversation with the Rodian bartender and owner, Taeg. Kae crept up behind him and pressed her finger into his back. He instantly froze, and Taeg made a gruff noise.

"Don't move or I'll shoot," she joked, and the Twi'lek laughed and spun around on the stool. "Hey, Lee."

"You made it. Didn't think you'd ever get here," he said in slightly accented Basic. She made herself comfortable on the stool beside him and quickly ordered Tarisian ale from Taeg. "Long day?"

"About as long as usual," she replied with a shrug as the ale was set on the counter in front of her. "I got a new job. I'll tell you about it later, though. How were things for you?"

Lee shifted in his seat and gave her a stare that included the raising of the fleshy mound above his eye that served as the Twi'lek eyebrow. "What do you think? Driving people around Galactic City is a shitty job on the best of days, and everyone seemed to be in a special hurry today. It doesn't help that I had a tonne of tourists from the Outer Rim show up and babble on forever about how _amazing _and _wonderful _it was to see a rare Lethan Twi'lek," he spat, shaking his head so his lekku twitched. "Hey, guys, I have a genetic mutation that makes my skin red. Get over it."

Kae chuckled. Lee never missed a chance to whine about his job—an air-taxi driver—and that whining was usually accompanied by people who were in awe of his skin tone. "Shit happens sometimes, Lee. Have you hit any tables yet?"

"Nope. Start a fun game?" Even as he spoke, he tugged his deck of pazaak cards from his pocket, and waved them enticingly in front of her.

"Senate rules," Kae agreed, and they stood from the stools and found an empty table tucked into the opposite corner of the smoky room. "At least until someone else comes along. I'm not about to give _you _any money." She settled into the hard durasteel chair opposite Lee as he began shuffling his cards.

"Drink up," he muttered absently.

"Why?"

"Nar Shaddaa rules, babe," he said, glancing up at her with a smirk.

Kae snorted and pulled out her own deck from the old canvas bag slung over her shoulder. "_Senate _rules, Lee. No way you're getting me to do _that _again. Once was more than enough."

Lee laughed and winked one dark green eye at her. "You know what you need, Kae?" he asked, starting the game by flipping his first card.

She arched one eyebrow in an answer and flipped her own card.

"You need a man to get you laid," he said, and sipped at his juri juice. "When was the last time?"

Feeling a hot flush brighten her ghastly pale cheeks, she glowered at the cards on the table and mumbled, "None of your damn business, Lee."

She could feel his keen eyes on her as she forcefully stared at her hand. Finally, she heard the chair shift as he settled back, and the click of a lighter. Looking up, she found Lee hunched over a wooden pipe, the contents glowing and crackling and giving off a faintly purple smoke that only added to the clouded air of the club.

"Spice, Lee? Really? I thought you were done with it."

"It's legal, babe. Just gree. Are we going to play or what?"

Kae sighed and finished up her turn, allowing him to play—and win, hitting twenty right off the bat. Lee grunted victoriously and pulled his cards off the table to shuffle and begin the second round. "You know," he began through a mouthful of pipe and gree, "I'm guessing by the colour on your dead face that the last time was Nar Shaddaa rules back at the house."

Kae's mouth screwed into a grimace and she rubbed her face. "Shut up, Lee. It's embarrassing enough living with you and knowing what happened without you bringing it up every day. I was drunk, you abused my addiction, and there you go. Get over it."

"So I'm right?"

"Yeah."

His jaw dropped and the pipe nearly tumbled from his lips. "Really? No way. Kae Luka, we gotta fix that. You're hot, for a dead chick—"

"Not dead," she mumbled.

"—and you can totally get laid. I'm sure you could find some dashing pazaak player tonight to bring home. I could help."

"No thanks. In case you haven't noticed, all the men who come here are filthy scoundrels."

Lee gave her puppy dog eyes that had a ninety-eight percent chance of making her melt and give into his every whim. "Babe, don't hurt my feelings. You and me come here almost every day. Just because you're a cop doesn't mean you have to be all high and mighty. Break off this whole 'huzzah monogamy' thing and just jump somebody for the sake of jumping somebody." His eyes glittered in the dim, smoky light of the den, and the tips of his lekku quivered almost excitedly. Kae recognized the signs of gree kicking in. His high was starting.

"Next round?" she said, hoping to change the subject.

Lee shook his head. "Gotta piss. I'll be back in a couple minutes. We can start up again after." He took a final puff from his pipe, handed it off to her, and wandered across the room to find the bathrooms.

Kae sighed and gave the pipe a narrow glare. Despite gree being one of the few legal spices, she still didn't like it. And now that she was supposed to hunt down some rogue smuggling ring in the Uscru District, she really didn't approve of her friend's use of the drug. But what could she do? Lee had been using gree much longer than the two had known each other—and that was coming on eight years now.

She stood, pushing back her chair with a slight squeak, and pushed through the growing crowd to reach the bar. "Another one, Taeg," she said, setting her empty glass on the countertop.

The old Rodian nodded and refilled her ale. "Glad to see you back, Luka," he said with an odd inflection. "Things are always a little nicer when you're here to keep 'em in order. All the regulars know you're a cop."

Kae leaned her elbows on the edge of the bar, still loosely clutching Lee's pipe in one hand. She opened her mouth, ready to ask if he had any problems with spice in his den—she hadn't got a chance to read the datapad yet, and didn't know which Uscru businesses were having the trouble—but remembered at the last second that Taeg really didn't care if people used or dealt spice on his property, so long as they did it with discretion. To her chagrin, she had to arrest a few of the regulars on several occasions due to illegal spice use.

"So Graalbacc and S0-B3-GE3 told me that somebody's been winning straight all night," she mentioned conversationally.

"Oh, sure. Newcomer. Says he's from Corellia. He told me his name, but I don't remember it. Thought of you as soon as he came in and Graalbacc pointed him out," Taeg said, filling a mug and handing it over to the server droid beside him. "If you're up for a challenge, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to play with you. Apparently S0 told him all about you when he showed up earlier. Damn droid needs a spring cleaning already."

Kae chuckled and sipped at her ale. "Why in the hell would S0 mention me?"

"You're an oddity, Luka. We don't get many Nagai around here. At all. Not to mention one who's also a detective for the CSF and a good pazaak player. He's also interested in Lee," Taeg added, scratching behind one antenna. "You two are the strangest pair on Coruscant."

"Doubtful. Maybe I'll check him out, see if he's worth my time."

"And money. He isn't going to play you senate, that's for sure."

Just as she pulled back from the counter, pulling out a few credits and sliding them over to Taeg, the Rodian added, "Oh, he's got a droid with him too, Luka. Don't piss it off, got it?"

She blinked, startled, and glanced over at table eighteen. A large crowd was surrounding it; she couldn't even see the players. "Why?"

"Hunter-Killer model, straight off the factory line on Telos, from what I'm hearing," Taeg said with a sage nod. "Never seen one like it before. I don't recommend doing anything to get either of them angry."

Kae sent him a smile, more to comfort herself than him. "I'm a cop, Taeg, and I know that you and Graalbacc have my back. I'm sure I'll be all right." With that, she moved away from the bar and wandered curiously over to table eighteen. A few in the crowd moved to let her through, but most didn't want to lose their spots to see the action, waiting their turn to play the Corellian stranger. Murmuring slight apologies for accidentally elbowing the random array of aliens, Kae finally reached the edge of the throng and spotted the pazaak table.

Two men were seated across from each other at the table, cards set neatly in front of them. One was a regular, a Gran she recognized from her visits but whose name she could never remember, and the other was the stranger from Corellia. He was thin, with light peachy skin and freckles spattered over his nose. His hair jutted up messily and was a beautiful dark auburn that caught lighter bronze and deep brown in the dim light of the den. His eyes, though lowered on his cards, were sparkling blue, and a thin smirk pulled at his lips. He was dressed simply, but she could see a holster and blaster pistol strapped to his hip. But her eyes froze and her breath hitched in her throat when she saw the stark black tattoo on the side of his neck, just below and behind his left ear. A long, cracked skull with jagged teeth and two huge tusks; the stranger may have been from Corellia, but he was a Mandalorian.

Standing behind him, head pivoting and sunset orange photoreceptors glowing, was a tall grey droid, one of the infamous Hunter-Killer series manufactured by G0-T0 on Telos IV.

Kae shuddered at the sight of it, then returned her sights on the pazaak table.

The stranger was leaning back in his chair, totally at ease with the world as he finished up his turn. He had nineteen; one more point, and he would win. "I'll stand," he said, with a soft Corellian accent.

Kae nudged the man beside her and whispered, "Round?"

"Three," he replied, just as quietly. "He won the last two."

The Gran was practically sweating bullets as he set all three eyes on his hand. He was at eighteen. Kae shook her head; another move, and he could either take the game or lose it. And judging by the pile of credits between them, he was going to lose a lot. His side of the bet was empty, but the Corellian had amassed a huge pile from his games, sitting tauntingly just in front of the Hunter-Killer droid.

Finally, after a tense few minutes, the Gran flipped his final card and the bated breath of the crowd release in a collective sigh. It was a three.

The Corellian laughed and pulled the credits over to his side as the Gran dejectedly pulled his deck together. "Good luck next time, man," he said with a wink as he began neatly stacking the credits. "Anybody else want to have a shot?"

A few people glanced to their buddies, but nobody stepped forward right away. The man surveyed the crowd, tapping his fingers on the table, until his warm gaze fell on Kae.

Her heart stopped.

"You must be the Nagai that's so known around here," he remarked, his face lighting into a grin. "I've heard you're a legend. Want to play?"

Against all better judgement, Kae moved stiffly forward and took the newly vacated seat. "Kaekoletai Luka," she said, setting Lee's pipe and her glass on the edge of the table. "Resident Nagai."

"Lan Renner, resident nobody," he said with a smile, and held out his hand. Kae gave it a narrow glance before setting her skinny, bony hand in his firm grip. "Twenty credit ante, added blinds per round, winner takes all?"

"Sure." Kae pulled out her deck and quickly shuffled it as he did the same. Once the cards were dealt, they both pushed twenty credits into the centre of the table.

"You go," he offered.

As Kae drew her hand and flipped her first card from the table deck, the Corellian absently mentioned, "Bit of a spice connoisseur, are you?" Kae glanced up at him, startled, and saw that he was gesturing to the pipe beside her.

"Oh. That's my friend's. I'm only holding it for him," she said, and looked down at the table. Her first number was a four. Useless for now and there was no point wasting valuable hand cards so early in the game. "End."

Renner laughed and pulled his first card from the table deck. A nine. "End. Sure, sure. Everyone says that they're just holding it for a friend. What is it?"

"Gree." She began her next turn: her total became ten with a six added to the table. Halfway there. "End."

Another flip. His total became thirteen. He played a minus two card from his hand. Eleven.

"End. So what do you go by?"

"Kae. Nobody can pronounce Kaekoletai." She turned an eight from the table hand, and took a moment to stare at her hand. Three cards in; she could easy stand and if she lost, no matter; they still had two more rounds to go. But if she kept playing, it was a definite loss. "Stand."

He grunted softly and flipped over a six, and his total became seventeen. "Know a lot of other Nagai with crazy names?"

"Sure. My parents and my brother all have long names."

"On Nagi?"

"I was born on Coruscant," she corrected blandly, watching with tense stillness as he finished his turn with another card from the table. Evidently he didn't have a two or a three card in his hand to make a tie or win the game, and was forced to go with luck of the draw.

"Oh, fucking hell," he said solidly as he turned his last card. A ten. A bloody unlucky ten, making his total twenty-seven and a painful loss.

Applause and cheers rose up from the crowd, and Kae grinned, pulling her cards together as Renner shook his head. "First loss since you got here?" she asked, shuffling her hand into the table deck.

"Incredibly, yeah. Lucky work there, girl. Two more rounds, though. I can still scrape up a win. Blind bet, winner takes half." He added twenty more credits to the pot, and Kae put in ten. "So what's your brother's name, then? I think I might've met another Nagai a few days ago, just by the looks of things."

Kae began the second round with an eight. "End. His name's Krantenoktor. Everyone calls him Tory for short."

"Hm. Could've been him. Always thought Nagai were legends, actually." He turned a six. "End. I'd never met one before until this week. How'd you guys all end up here from Nagi?"

"Long history, don't want to explain it," she said, and flipped over a two. "End."

"All right, all right, that's fair." He drew a one, then played a plus six card from his hand, making his total thirteen. "End."

They remained silent for the duration of the round. To the disappointment of the crowd, Renner hit twenty while Kae was still trying to climb up from a pitiful fifteen, and they added their final blinds to the pot. At one hundred credits, it was a sizable bet to win. As the hands were dealt, Kae tried to keep the anxiety from showing on her face. She wanted to beat this Corellian or Mandalorian stranger, to show him that not everybody at Taeg's was a poor pazaak player.

He started the final round with a three, and as he contemplated his hand, Kae asked, "Mandalorian?"

"Hm? Oh. Yeah, I am."

"You know tensions are a little thick still."

"Sure. But I didn't fight in the Mandalorian Wars. I didn't try to take over the galaxy. They're my people, and I'm proud of it. It's not like I'm trying to topple the Republic just by staying on Coruscant for a while." Renner shrugged and brushed a hand through his scruffy ginger hair. "End. My father and most of my family fought though. Bit of an awkward thing there, seeing as it's barely been seven years since it ended."

Kae's first card was a ten. "End."

Renner flipped a six. "Nine. What a showstopper. End."

Kae quickly tossed her next table card beside her first, and she paused as the crowd began shrieking with delight. "Ten?" she said breathlessly.

Renner laughed and shook his head. "What a fluke. Good game, Luka. Only person who's managed to beat me all night. You really earned these credits." He tucked his cards away and gestured to the pile of credits on his side of the table. "Count them up, HK, would you?"

Kae jerked, surprised, but realized he had to be addressing the droid that stood so menacingly beside him. The thing's head swivelled toward him, orange photoreceptors alight, and said in a mechanical voice, identifiably male and rather emotional compared to most droids, "Query: Were you not counting when you received the credits, Master?"

"Sure, but you know how I am." Renner stood and stretched, his joints cracking, as the droid grudgingly began shifting through the meticulously stacked credits. "Hey, as a reward, you'll get an oil bath at the hotel."

Kae watched with a curious frown as the droid separated the stacks an equal distance apart and its photoreceptors flickered spasmodically. "Satisfied comment: That would be most agreeable, Master. Summary: You have two thousand three hundred twenty-four Republic credits, as you surmised."

"Great." Renner dragged the heap into a sack he picked up from the floor, and handed it to the droid, which took it without question. "To the bar." He trudged away, with the droid following at his heels.

Kae remained beside pazaak table eighteen until the crowd dispersed and someone elbowed her in the back.

"Sick handiwork, babe," Lee's familiar Twi'lek voice spoke up from behind her. She turned and he snatched his burnt-out gree pipe from her hand. "How much?"

"A hundred creds. Were you in the bathroom the whole time?" she asked, quickly finishing off her ale and setting the empty glass on the bar.

"No way. I saw the whole game. You were the first one to beat him all night. Way to solidify your place in Taeg's Pazaak Den history. Play me?"

"Nah. Want to just go home?" she asked hopefully as she tucked away the new credits. "I'm exhausted from patrolling all day, and I could use a real stiff drink, not Taeg's watered-down Tarisian ale."

Lee grinned, showing off pearly white teeth behind his crimson lips. "Ooh, drinking at home with Kae-Kae? Best night ever. Let's go."

As she followed him toward the entrance of the den, she asked, "Are you able to drive, or do you want me to?"

"I'll be fine. Not intoxicated at all, babe. See you later, boys," he said, giving S0 and Graalbacc a mockingly elegant bow as he strolled past them. "Until sometime next week, I imagine."

Graalbacc made a happy woofing sound, and S0 said, "Farewell, Lees'anah, Kaekoletai."

"Bye, boys." Kae waved to them as she followed Lee through the short tunnel entrance and they arrived into the cool, bustling atmosphere of Coruscant at night. Kae inhaled deeply, taking a moment to enjoy the acrid mixture of pollutions from the factories in the industrial districts and the vehicles, and the reek of spice and other drugs that littered the true ground of Coruscant in the Uscru Entertainment District. It was the only time she ever set foot on the surface of the planet; only to visit her favourite haunt and on the rare surface patrol for the CSF.

Her soft-soled boots crunched over the broken glass and filth on the ground as she trotted faithfully behind Lee to where he parked his speeder. It was a dusty old thing, rent with rust and dents from his high-speed adventures with equally brainless buddies—one of whom was Kae's twin brother, Tory—but it managed to get him from Point A to Point B, which, as he said, was really the only quality he looked for in a vehicle that wasn't for work.

Kae climbed into the passenger side of the scarlet speeder and buckled in as Lee got it started. They lifted from the ground with the uncomfortable, rocking motion that came with hovercrafts, but Lee expertly swung it around and smoothed it out, and they sped off toward their apartment.


	3. Tusken Tombstone

APARTMENT 42-116, USCRU-NORTH

CORUSCANT, CORE WORLDS

A heavy sigh flowed from her lungs as she kicked off her boots and slumped onto the plain beige couch beneath the main window of the apartment. "Durindfire, Lee," she mumbled, brushing her fingers through her messy black hair.

She heard him chuckle from across the living room. "Thanking your heathen gods it's the weekend, babe?" he joked. There was the hiss of a door opening, the clink of glasses, and the steady and comforting sound of sweet alcohol pouring.

"You bet I am." Kae glanced across the room, where Lee was standing over their makeshift bar, carefully measuring out the last bottle of durindfire they owned. The cocktail glowed a pleasant neon blue as he held it up and took a delicate sniff. "Hurry up. We can use the credits I got from Taeg's to buy more."

Lee looked at her, dubious, then apparently decided that she was much wiser than he, for he poured the rest of the durindfire into two cocktail glasses and wandered back over to the couches. "Here you are, milady."

"Thanks." Kae took a sip, settled more comfortably into the couch, and pressed a button to turn on the holoprojector for HNN. "Nothing new going on in the galaxy," she mumbled, shaking her head. "More devastated Jedi and growing Sith threat. Big deal. Just switch Jedi for Republic and Sith for Mandalorian, and we've got the Mandalorian Wars, and all that shit that went on afterwards with Malak and Revan. They need something new to report about."

"Like what? How the prices of blue durindfire are going up only because people are realizing that yellow tastes the same but looks like piss? Big news."

"Don't be an ass, Lee."

Lee turned down the volume on the holoprojector until it was just a background hum, and brought his pazaak deck out of his pocket. "All right, Luka, let's play."

Kae sent him in a gimlet glance, her thin white lips pulling into a smirk. "Really? We _just _left Taeg's Pazaak Den, and I don't want to jeopardize my winning streak."

But Lee was already finished shuffling and starting to deal his side hand. "Get your cards out, babe, or I'm calling your brother over and we're going partying."

Since her twin and her roommate partying usually involved, well, the seedier parts of the Coruscant Underground and Kae having to clean up the aftermath, playing pazaak at home with Lee and sipping at a neon blue cocktail sounded like pure ecstasy in comparison.

"All right," she acquiesced, and leaned across the couch to reach her bag. Tugging out her own cards, she quickly threw them onto the table in front of the couch, where Lee didn't hesitate to shuffle for her.

While listening to the problems of the galaxy on HoloNet News and quickly finishing off the last of their durindfire—and two glasses each of Tarkenian Nightflower—they went through two games, equal to six rounds of wins and losses, before Kae had to go to the bathroom.

"Gotta pee," she mumbled and stood—and instantly fell back onto the couch, her head whirling and the room spinning around them like a psychotic swoop bike, her extremities tingly and her vision a little bleary. "Woo," she gasped, clutching her forehead. "That's a surprise."

Lee snorted with laughter and nearly knocked over his half-empty Nightflower. "Ooh! Know what the neighbour downstairs has?"

"What?" Kae wiped her running nose and gave her Nightflower a longing stare.

"It's called Tusken Tombstone. Really rare shit from Tatooine. People say the Tusken Raiders make it, but I don't know if that's just a legend or not. Point is, neighbour downstairs says it tastes like sand and feels like sand going down."

"What is it?" she asked, leaning toward him in curiosity.

It was always hard to tell Lee was drunk when he wasn't drunk enough to be flailing and knocking things over. Where Kae and her brother turned red-faced if they were wasted—which was, as Lee pointed out on many occasions, a big deal, since as Nagai they were so pale they looked dead—Lee was already red-faced when sober—red-everything, actually—and she was having a hard time telling whether or not she was the only drunk one in the apartment.

"Whisky, I think. Either way, I think we should see if we can borrow some, maybe in exchange for gree." Lee grinned enticingly, and Kae felt bubbles of laughter fill up her lungs.

"Do it up, Lee. I'll wait here." She flopped back on the couch and waggled her fingers at him. He stood and instantly she knew—yes, Lees'anah was quite drunk. He stumbled, his knees giving out, and nearly collapsed on the table of messy cards, datapads and glasses. Somehow regaining his balance, he half-jogged half-tumbled to the door of the apartment, and was gone in an instant.

"Tusken Tombstone," Kae mumbled to herself, sliding off the couch and onto her knees. Standing was no long a safe option. Shuffling on her hands and knees, burning her palms on the carpeted floor, she crawled to the bathroom and slipped on the cool tiles, bumping her chin against the rim of the metallic toilet.

She somehow managed to do her business and crawl out by the time Lee fell back into the apartment, holding half a bottle of a reddish beverage. "Lee!" she said with a grin.

"Your teeth are as red as me, babe," he remarked, plopping on the floor next to her. "You bit your lip."

Kae swiped the back of her hand across her mouth; to her surprise, it came back glittering with scarlet blood. "Oh, jeez, I guess I did. Wouldja look at that? Did you get the Tusken Tombstone?"

"Yep, only cost me a bit of gree, too." He sloshed the whisky in front of her face, ever inviting.

"Open it, Lee," Kae begged, her eyes locked on the prize, that beautiful glass bottle with that luscious red liquid inside. "All I could think about while you were gone is how it would taste to swallow liquid sand!"

Lee laughed outright, his lekku swaying around his head, tips just grazing the backs of her hands. "You're so weird, Kae-Kae. Let's crack this sucker open."

So they did.

Once, when she and Tory were much younger and still attending school in one of the nicer districts of Galactic City, they had been playing in the sandbox in the classroom and Tory had shoved Kae's face into the ground and forced her to eat sand. In retaliation, she blooded his lip by chucking a protocol droid doll at his face. They were both sent home for the rest of the day.

Point is, Kae knew what sand tasted like.

And Tusken Tombstone whisky tasted like sand.

"Ugh!" She grimaced and slammed her shot glass onto the table. Lee gave her a curious look, making a gargoyle wince as he examined the label on the bottle. "That tastes like kindergarten!"

"You're lucky I know what you're talking about, otherwise you're just a child-loving creep," he said, pointing at her with one long, red finger. "More pazaak?"

Kae shrugged and scrubbed her hand on her tongue. It felt as though there were still grains of sand, slight debris, left behind on her tongue. It had scratched and torn on the way down, and now was burning hotter than the twin suns of Tatooine in her belly.

"Sure." She sloppily moved her cards into the right places, and across the table from her, Lee did the same, clenching the lip of his shot glass between his teeth, a dribble of whisky sliding down his chin.

"Nr Shaddrr ruls," he mumbled, trying—and failing—to grin while biting the cup.

Kae scowled and snatched the glass from his teeth, accidentally hitting his jaw. "What'd you say? Speak clearly, man."

"I _said_, Nar Shaddaa rules."

And, too drunk to listen to her sweet-voiced common sense, nagging in her ear about propriety and drinking and gambling and _this-is-your-best-friend-and-roommate-and-your-brother's-best-friend_, Kaekoletai Luka lost the first round of Nar Shaddaa pazaak and promptly lost her tunic as well.

—

She awoke to the sound of a door hissing into the ceiling. The room was still dark, and she was sprawled on her back, blankets tangled around her legs, her arms splayed out in a spread-eagle position. The shrieks and hums of speeders buzzing past the apartment complex seemed abnormally loud, and she realized that no, it was not the door opening that woke her up, but the worms twisting in her gut.

Just as she made a noise like a toad croaking in pain, she scrambled to her feet and made it to the adjacent bathroom just in time to find out that Tusken Tombstone felt like sand coming up as well as going down.

Leaning her cheek on the cool toilet seat, Kae wiped off her mouth and looked up to see Lee gawking down at her, toothbrush jutting from his mouth and dark green eyes wide.

"Good morning," she said tiredly.

"Good morning." He quickly finished up with his teeth and sat on the floor next to her. "Feeling all right?"

"Incredibly enough, no. I don't even remember drinking that much."

Lee rubbed his nose, and she looked at him through a frown, hating that hangovers didn't hit him unless he partied with Tory—because partying with Tory, he always took it way too far. "You didn't. Not really. I was just looking at the label of the Tusken Tombstone bottle. It's, uh, toxic to some races. Looked it up after. Weequay can't drink it, neither can a handful of others."

"Why?"

"Too much of a foreign alcohol. It's poisonous to them. According to what I read, nobody's _really _sure what kind of alcohol is in it, because apparently it _isn't _a legend that the Tusken Raiders make it, and they've figured out a way to make their own alcohol out of… probably sand, judging by the taste and texture," he joked lamely. "Anyways. All in all, I'm not surprised you got so fucked up. Somebody should add that it turns Nagai crazy fun drunks."

Kae groaned and leaned her throbbing head on her arm. "Speaking of fucked up, did we…?"

"Yep." He bit back a smirk. "But hey, minor accomplishment here, considering how hammered you were: you managed to clothe yourself after… badly. But still, clothed."

She looked down at her body, hunched into a shivering ball beside the toilet, and noticed that yes, she had her trousers and one of Lee's shirts on. "Good for me," she cheered weakly.

He laughed and patted her shoulder. "It's okay. And I don't care about last night, so long as you don't. I mean, you're hot, for a skinny dead chick who's also my best friend."

"Thanks?" Kae inhaled deeply and cringed; she reeked of vomit and alcohol and sex. An unpleasant combination, really. "Don't tell my brother, okay? Last time it happened and I told him, he threatened to neuter you if it happened again."

"Such a sweet boy. Mama and Papa Luka must be so proud. Want something to eat? Some of those crazy foreigners from the Outer Rim gave me a bunch of bristlemelons as a thank-you for taxiing them around Galactic City so valiantly."

Kae perked up. "Bristlemelons? Maybe in a bit. After I'm done feeling like barfing." Lee chuckled and helped her to her feet and led her into the living room, which had been cleaned since she was passed out in his bedroom. Once she was comfortably deposited on the couch, Lee wandered into the kitchen.

Kae yawned and surveyed the datapads all lined up neatly on the table in front of her. One happened to be the information for the spice smuggling ring given to her by the chief of the Uscru Sector of the Coruscant Security Force. Carefully leaning forward so her brain didn't start doing somersaults in her skull, she picked up the datapad and switched it on.

Just as the chief had said, several of the businesses under their protection in the Uscru Entertainment District were reporting spice dealings within their premises, and there's a thought that they might be related to one another, rather than random low-key dealers.

As she thought, Taeg's Pazaak Den wasn't on the list of businesses. Taeg didn't care either way if his customers dealt or did spice at his business, so long as they didn't get rowdy. That was what Graalbacc was for.

Well, come next week, she would be in these places, looking for clues, like a real detective.

"Lee?" she asked, setting the datapad down and turning on the holoprojector to _Live With Regis And Karoa._

"What?"

"What do you have to do to buy spice?"

Something clattered in the kitchen, and his face popped out around the corner, jaw dropped and face aghast. "_What?_"

She tried to look as innocent as possible, but she doubted it succeeded at all, considering she was horribly hung over and she knew there was booze making her hair stand on end like demon horns. "I need to know what you have to do to buy spice."

"Are you still drunk?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Did you accidentally get into my gree?"

"No, Lee."

"So you're saying you're sober."

"Yes."

"Did someone put you up to this?"

"_Lee_," she said forcefully—which was enough to make her eyes want to pop out of her head to escape the pain. "Just tell me, all right?"

"All right, but you're scaring me, babe. Um, are you planning on getting gree, or…?"

She shrugged and stole another glance at the datapad. "Uh, not likely."

Lee's eyes narrowed. "What're you looking at? Somebody _did _put you up to this!"

"No, it's for work—"

He sighed heavily; so heavily it was almost a groan. "Great. Just great. The CSF has a drug problem."

"It's for my new job that I was going to tell you about last night," she snapped, but that only made her head ache more. "Ugh, the chief wants me to head an investigation on smuggling rings in the Uscru Entertainment District, because business owners don't want illegal spice going around and damaging their value and scaring off patrons, okay? That's what I'm doing. And I figure the best way to attract an illegal spice smuggling ring is to want to buy spice."

"Oh. Don't you ever scare me like that again, Kae Luka, got it? I thought you'd gone bad girl on me there." He wandered back into the kitchen, and the warm aroma of Onderonian coffee floated out behind him. "Get giggledust."

"Why?"

"Last time I had it was on Ryloth, and I'm certain it was unrefined, so there was no giggling at all."

"I'm not actually going to buy any, Lee."

"Then you're going to get caught. I'll give you the creds for it and everything. Please, babe?"

She sighed and turned down the volume of _Live With Regis And Karoa_. Despite already being quieter than she usually liked, it was like thunder right in her ears. "What if I get caught? What if the chief finds out that I actually bought illegal spice?"

"Tell him you had to in order to catch the bad guy. Offer to turn it in as evidence."

"You think like a criminal. It scares me sometimes. Is the coffee ready?"

"It will be soon. Bristlemelons?"

"Mm-hm."

Lee wandered back into the kitchen a few minutes later, holding two mugs of steaming, spicy Onderonian coffee and one bristlemelon, spines burned off just recently, judging by the smell. "Here you are, milady." He set them all down on the table and sat beside her, legs curled beneath him. Cradling his mug between his hands, he scowled at the holoprojector as Karoa Simae—co-host and incredibly gorgeous golden-yellow Twi'lek—stood up from her chair to show off her revealing white outfit. "Why do you watch this crap?" he asked.

Kae gave him a gimlet glance. He'd drunkenly told her on more than one occasion that while he despised weekend/morning programming, he thought Karoa was hot. "Because this crap is better than watching the same news on HNN or the null hockey playoffs. You know I'm interested in what's going on with celebrities and shit."

"Point taken, babe. By the way, Tory's coming over soon. I won't tell him what happened."

"Good. I can't imagine you'll be much fun when you become effeminate because he chops off your balls."

Kae spent the rest of the morning on the couch, listening to the holoprojector as Lee absently switched through the programs. She tried to read the information Watson got on the spice ring, but her brain violently disagreed, and she was forced to stop.

By the time her twin brother arrived, loudly greeting those in the apartment, Kae had managed to keep her food down, shower and redress herself. She was in the process of coming through her short, scruffy black hair with her fingers when a loud thud made her head ring and her knees buckle.

"Krantenoktor Luka, I'm going to kick your ass!" she snarled, gripping the lip of the sink for support as she turned to see her tall, wiry twin brother grinning at her.

"Hi, hung over sister," he said, spreading his arms for a desperate, childish hug. Tory was taller than most humanoid men she knew, with ashen, porcelain skin, jet black hair, and silvery grey eyes—features of the Nagai that they both shared. "How was your night?" He instantly enveloped her in a crushing Wookiee-hug, and she collapsed against him, too startled and exhausted to push away.

"Hi, Tory. It was good. Have you ever had the misfortune of having Tusken Tombstone?"

"No way." He tugged her, totally unwillingly, from the bathroom, practically dragging her feet along the floor until they reached the living room, where Lee was staring at them in silence. "You know that stuff's made out of rotted krayt blood, right?"

Kae froze, halting in her meagre struggles, and gave him a terrified stare. "What?"

"Yeah." Tory frowned and glanced back at Lee, who was looking rather pink after paling several shades. "You mean… you didn't know? A buddy of Dad's told me. I guess you weren't there for that…"

She cleared her throat, feeling suddenly clogged up. "How—how does a buddy of Dad know?"

"He lived with the Sand People for a while. Saw how they made it."

"Krayt." Lee's voice would have been hilarious, had it been less of a _going-to-vomit _situation. "Like the dragon."

"Yeah. No wonder Kae looks so sick."

She cleared her throat, loud enough to shut her brother up before he could reveal any other disgusting points of information. "How's Clara doing, Tory?"

Clara was Tory's Miraluka girlfriend, a very responsible girl who worked as a secretary for some senator or another. Blind at birth, like every single full-blood Miraluka, she only saw because her kind was Force-sensitive, though it wasn't something she was keen on letting everyone know. Not after the Mandalorian Wars and Darth Malak's violent assault on the Republic and the Jedi Order.

He flapped a dismissive hand. "Good. Just got an itty bitty raise, and she's thinking of leaving her parents' house. But more importantly, you two drank rotted dragon blood."

Lee gagged and Kae felt the worms of nausea slither back into her gut. "I need to sit down," she muttered, and duck-walked into her bedroom, locking the door behind her before her obnoxious brother could ruin her day even more.


	4. The Light Side

Even if dancing wasn't really something she did much, Kae always enjoyed The Light Side club on Vos Gesal Street. With deep bass music, frantic light shows, and the largest array of races she had seen in once place, there was no doubt it had been one of the places hit by the spice dealers.

After announcing to Lee that it was the first place she was investigating, he told her to lay off until early evening set in, once the place started filling up. He also became her informal stylist, deciding on the spot, five minutes before he had to leave to start his shift as a taxi driver, that she really couldn't show up and expect to be taken seriously wearing baggy beige trousers and a white tunic, with her hair left in a messy pixie and no makeup on.

Self-conscious and uncomfortable in the heat of the club, Kae moved past the bouncer and merged into the writhing crowd dancing on the flashing neon floor. Sweaty bodies bumped into her as people jumped and slid about, and she ducked away, making a beeline for the tables tucked into the far corner, across from the huge, glowing bar. After managing to extricate herself from the throng, she exhaled slowly and found an empty chair. Social places, such as The Light Side, were so much easier to navigate when she had Lee with her. Loud, noticeable Lee.

He had forced her into clothes she hadn't worn in eight years, not since she went to all the popular nightclubs in Uscru in her early twenties with her more-irresponsible-than-Lee-and-Tory-combined friends. Actually, she had met Lee while out with those particular friends, and they had started their relationship the same way it went today—drunkenly playing pazaak and, as he put it, jumping.

Tight black trousers that hugged her nearly nonexistent curves; a corset-like, strapless top with subtle red highlights; tall stiletto shoes: she felt like a cheap hooker. Not so much after he expertly (she always had a vague suspicion that Lee wanted to be a hairstylist, since he always envied people with hair and played with hers constantly) combed her hair up into a sexy mockery of a faux hawk and painted her eyelids with black eyeliner, making her have that cat-eye look that all the most successful models wore.

It was so unlike what she was comfortable wearing that she wanted to crawl into a corner of The Light Side and not leave until everyone else was gone and the only one left who could see how ridiculous she looked was the janitor.

A server droid slid up to her table and just after giving it her order of a small juma juice, the comlink on her belt buzzed against her hip. Surprised, she jerked, and grabbed it up. "Yeah?"

"Hey, Detective. I made it. Where are you hiding?"

"Don't call me that here, Benny. I'm at a table in the back." She hung up the comm and tried to peer over the heads of the crowd. After hearing from Lee that it would seem strange for a 'hot dead chick' to be at a club alone, Kae had called the chief and asked his permission to have her partner join her on the excursion. And since it was fine from HQ, Ben Jurhic had promptly been called in.

Since when had she been so vulnerable at nightclubs? It used to be what she did two or three days a week when she was younger.

"I'm old already," she muttered, shaking her head as the droid returned with her drink.

"Not too old, De—Kae."

She looked up from the table to see her Human partner, Ben Jurhic, approaching her table with a smile on his face. Grinning, Kae gestured to the seat opposite her, and he made himself comfortable, ordering a non-alcoholic drink from the server droid.

"Thanks, Benny."

Ben had served for the Republic during the Mandalorian Wars, and it hadn't treated him kindly. He lost an arm by one of the Mandalorian warriors, and had been given a cybernetic prosthesis in replacement. He covered it with a glove and almost always wore long-sleeved shirts in shame of his mutilation, but despite it being invisible when covered, it still gave off a slight hum when one was close enough. After the war, he had quickly retired from the Republic army and got a nice, cozy job as a constable of the CSF.

"Can I say something?" he asked, raising one dark eyebrow.

"Sure."

"You look very nice tonight."

Kae nearly choked on her juma juice, but managed to tactfully convert it to a delicate cough. "Uh—thanks, Ben. It was all the doing of my roommate."

"She has an impeccable sense of style."

Ben didn't like to talk much, which meant the two knew very little about each other; Kae only knew what she did because she had lurked through his files after being promoted.

"He. He's a Twi'lek."

"Oh. Is he gay?"

"Definitely not. He just knows what women wear when they go out. And he's a slut," she added, as if it explained everything one needed to ever know about Lees'anah.

Ben's face puckered somewhat, and Kae held back an inward sigh. Ben was old-fashioned. Ben didn't think a man and a woman should be roommates.

"Have you ever bought spice before, Benny?" she asked sweetly.

"Me? No. Have you?"

"No. But my roommate told me the basics of it. Designated driver?"

"Get wasted, Kae. Don't worry, it's in the name of the law."

Kae giggled and hid her mouth behind her glass of juma juice. "All right, thanks, Benny. I'll try not to go too overboard."

Benny cracked a warm smile. "I'll keep an eye on you from here, Kae. Get on that dance floor. You'll get noticed by any secretive spice dealers out there."

But she remained at the table for the next several minutes, sipping at her drink and merely watching the people as they danced, their lithe bodies flicking in the flashing, pulsing light overhead. Once her glass was empty, she steeled herself with a deep breath and stood from the table in the corner.

"Here goes nothing, I guess," she murmured, and plastered a pleasant expression on her made-up face.

The crowd enveloped her in an instant. Bodies pressed against her, flesh against flesh; amid the loud music and voices, she heard and felt hot breath hiss in her ear as the dancers moved. A sensual, personal moment, stuck between strangers like a pulsating orgy of all races.

Limbs—hands, tentacles, suckers, fins—all grazed her body as she moved into the thick of the crowd on the flashing dance floor. Finally, after an aeon of struggle, she reached her destination: the rear wall of the club, where the bands played and the synthesized music blared. Cushioned, neon-lit benches lined the wall behind a durasteel railing; those seats were reserved for lucky VIPs, groupies, and their particular ilk. On more than one occasion she had seen men and women vanish into the smoky alcoves behind the railing only to emerge minutes later with distant, glazed eyes and smiling faces.

Proud to say she had never used spice, Kae still knew the appearance of someone who was high. She did live with Lee, after all.

Despite how uncomfortable she felt upon walking into the bustling life of The Light Side, she quickly fell into the movement of the room. It was impossible not to. Unwillingly pressed between an exceptionally beautiful—and busty—Human girl and an exceptionally short Balosar man, Kae had no choice but to move as they did, bending and gyrating to the thud of the bass.

Then the song abruptly changed to something frantic and screeching, and Kae was tugged off the dance floor by the Human girl. "I hate this song," she remarked, shaking her head so her long blonde hair fell away from her made-up face. "I couldn't help but notice you. I'm Hanna."

"Kae." She took her hand, breathing heavily from the dance.

The girl grinned and adjusted her low-cut shirt, smoothing out wrinkles. "I hate to sound like a cliché, but do you come here often? I totally feel like I should've seen you before."

Kae managed to hold back a grimace. Just like Tory and their parents: noticeable because they were Nagai, a species that was almost completely unknown to the general populace. "Sometimes, yeah. Usually with my friend Lee, but he's working right now and couldn't make it."

Hanna's big blue eyes bugged open as she leaned against the cool railing. "Lee? Like the red Twi'lek?"

Kae held on her smile, which honestly wasn't too hard. It was impossible to stay in a bad mood for long in such an exuberant atmosphere.

Still. Typical Lee, befriending girls with huge knockers.

"Yeah, that'd be him. You know him?"

"Sure! I've met him once or twice. He's probably the coolest alien I've ever met. He's into, like, everything."

Considering from first impressions alone this girl seemed to Kae like a total idiot—and Kae liked to think she was good at interpreting people from a glance, being a detective—it was easy to assume this was one of Lee's many semi-anonymous spice buddies, and even if she hadn't been she was likely a spice user herself.

Sometimes Fate decided to kick in at the best times.

Leaning in close, Kae murmured, "Lee actually wanted me to get him giggledust while I was out."

The girl clapped her hands to her mouth. "Ooh! Giggledust! I know exactly where you can find that! You have to be _so _careful with it, though. Don't open it until you absolutely want to use it. Otherwise it's giggle city. Come on." She took Kae's hand without invitation and towed her to the edge of the dance floor. Two tough-looking Aqualish stood guard next to the entrance to the roped-off alcove, but they didn't even give Hanna a second glance as she led Kae behind the railing and into one of the nearest nooks.

A bench wrapped around the wall, and only colourful neon lights lit up the darkness. The original purpose of the VIP section was, logically, for VIPs, but Kae had a hunch that people with enough money to bribe the Aqualish bodyguards stood a chance of getting their spot of glory.

Tucked into the corner was a tall, slender Cathar woman, surrounded by men and women of various species and various states of spice high. From their appearance alone Kae couldn't tell if they were using gree or some illegal type of spice, but one thing was certain: none of them were giggling uncontrollably.

The Cathar woman glanced up as they neared, but her feline face made no adjustment of emotion. Apathy covered her features; her vibrant green eyes merely gazed at them, uncaring, as they approached her. With the straight, narrow, flat nose of a cat; tall, pointed ears with tufts of black fur pointing out the tips; short, beautiful pale gold fur covering her sleek, thin body, and darker auburn stripes swiping into the sides of her face—and likely over the rest of her as well—she was a new sight for Kae, who rarely came across the lion people. Although odd—though certainly there were odder; Kae absolutely never wanted to meet an insectoid alien—there was something about her that was rather beautiful.

"Quira," Hanna chirped, and made a quick curtsey. Feeling ridiculous, Kae nodded in greeting.

The Cathar glanced sidelong at one of her companions, then back at the two newcomers. "What is it you want?" Boredom was thickly laced into her voice, as was an accent that could only be described as feline.

Hanna glanced around, then scuttled in closer to the Cathar. She began whispering quickly to the cat woman, and Kae cursed silently that she was too far away to hear. It was too late to swoop in and eavesdrop.

The Cathar grimaced and moved back, looking disgusted that this Human was so close to her. Swiping her claws through her shoulder-length golden mane, she cast an indifferent look at the two of them. "Who is this? She is new."

Realizing that she was being addressed, Kae took a step forward. There was a slightly smoky haze to the air, but couldn't that be attributed to the smoke machines that were sometimes worked during songs? "I'm Kae Luka," she introduced simply.

"Quira." The bold green eyes roved calmly over Kae's body, and she waited in uncomfortable silence before the Cathar asked, "So why is it you have come?"

"I need to find something."

"And what makes you think I can help you?"

Kae glanced at Hanna. "Uh—well, I'm not sure. I was just taken here by Hanna."

Quira growled from somewhere deep within her, and her lips pulled back from long white teeth. Hanna blanched and took an instinctual step backward, but only ended up bumping into one of the Cathar's followers. "You are a stupid little girl," she snapped, a dark scowl disrupting her exotically beautiful features. "Humans and their insolence. I hope you are not so stupid," she added, glancing at Kae.

Kae smiled. "I'm not even Human."

A long bout of silence filled the alcove. Then Quira gave a surprised chuckle and almost appeared to smile. "I like this one. She is funny. What are you then? One might easily think you Human."

"I'm Nagai. The planet of my people is very far from here; in a place you call the Unknown Regions. Unfortunately, I've never been there, I don't know the language of my people, and it's long, uncomfortable history how my family ended up here," she concluded with a smile.

Quira nodded sagely. "That is understandable. You are different. I have always found distaste with most Humans. Your kind seems agreeable—so far."

Being so visually different than most Humans, Kae and her family weren't usually so well-received when others found out about their heritage. First impressions were mutually positive; Kae found this Cathar very interesting, despite harbouring a bit of racial animosity toward Humans.

Quira stood, and Kae was surprised to find that she was a head shorter than the cat. Turning to one of the people nearby, she leaned in and whispered something, and the man scuttled off. "The Light Side would do without you spreading rumours, Hanna," Quira said, giving the Human girl a scrutinizing glare. Hanna seemed to shrink back against the wall. "The girl is delusional," she said, looking back at Kae. "She is an idiot for thinking I could possibly help a stranger find something, but I am glad she brought you to my attention. If you come to The Light Side again—" She handed Kae a datachip, the type one inserted into their comlink for new frequencies. "—find me. I am interested to learn more about your kind."

"I'd be happy to tell you what I know." Kae tucked the chip away and took the proffered hand. After giving it a quick shake, she cast a quick glance at Hanna and left the VIP lounge.

When she returned to Ben, he was almost exactly how she had left him: sipping at some non-alcoholic drink, gazing up at one of the few holo screens in the club, watching some sports game or another.

She slumped into her seat with a heavy sigh, and the server droid almost instantly appeared with a fresh glass of juma juice in hand. Ben gave her a short, sideways smile. "How did things go? You were gone a fairly long time."

"I ended up rubbing up against some Human girl, meeting a Cathar, and getting her number," she said, rubbing her knuckles against her temples. "No spice, no dice. We'll have to try this place another time. I'll call you if I need more help with other clubs?"

"Of course. I'd be happy to help out. Do you want me to drive you home now?"

Kae stole another glance at the writhing crowd of dancers. "Yeah. I think I've had enough excitement for tonight." She climbed from her seat and followed Ben as they weaved through the horde. He held a hand behind him as he snaked past the people, just in case she needed a guide. Kae smiled to herself; Benny Jurhic, always looking out for everyone over himself.

They finally broke the surface of the crowd and walked leisurely down the wide corridor leading to the docking pads. Galactic City never slept; the bright, flashing lights of clubs and apartments cut easily through the darkness of night, and yet it still felt like she had been doing vigorous exercises for the past day.

With a sigh, she muttered, "I really am getting old. It feels like I've been partying all day, but it can't be past midnight."

"It isn't. It's not even midnight yet." Ben glanced back at her as he skirted past a pair of very drunk Twi'leks. "How old will you be this year, Detective?"

"Thirty."

"Ouch. You _are _old." Ben smiled awkwardly and ran his cybernetic hand over his dark hair, speckled with grey.

Kae laughed and sped up to keep up with his stiff, swift soldier march. "All right, well, thirty is something of a milestone, all right?"

"Oh, sure. I remember when I turned thirty."

"Was that when the Republic was founded?"

"Actually, it was." Ben slipped through an open door to the right, toward the pad that housed his speeder, leaving Kae straggling behind, jaw dropped and tired eyes wide.

"Shit," she whispered, awed, and belatedly remembered that he was her ride home. Jogging down the bridge to the docking pad, she said, "You made a joke!"

Ben smiled and unlocked the speeder. "It isn't totally unknown, Detective," he remarked, and slipped into the vehicle.

Kae stood for several long moments in the cool air of the Coruscanti night, one hand on the roof of the speeder, frowning at nothing in particular. Finally, she lifted her shoulder in a shrug and ducked into the speeder just as Ben started it up with a whir and a high-pitched hum. "I guess you're right," she agreed. "Don't scare me like that anymore."

"I'll try to stick to being austere from now on. You'll need to remind me where your house is, Detective."

"Just start heading toward Uscru-North. I can give you directions from there."

Ben nodded, and merged seamlessly into the never-ending traffic of Galactic City.

The ride to Uscru-North and Kae's apartment was stifled with silence. The music of some Bith cantina band played through speakers by Kae's head; other than that, it was quiet. Ben kept to himself, his mind lost on his own thoughts. Kae always wondered what went on in his head, where no one else could overhear. She imagined it would be a little frightening; traumatic memories of the war, of going directly against some of the fiercest warriors in the known galaxy.

As a cop, Kae knew how to defend herself. But she had enough common sense to know that fighting Mandalorians would be a mistake you wouldn't live to regret.

Watching the war unfold over HoloNet News had been made even more soul-wrenching by the fact that her twin brother had barely escaped conscription into the army of the Republic. Kae had been immune because of her safe position within the Coruscant Security Force, but at the time Tory had been unemployed and mooching off civil services to keep up his bad habits. Days after the outbreak of the war, when the Mandalorians began their relentless assault on the galaxy, Tory had been contacted by a recruitment officer of the army. As a healthy, able-bodied young man, he was expected to serve his Republic.

Kae shuddered at the memory. Their father, a weapons manufacturer with his own factory in The Works, the industrial district of Galactic City, and a successful shop in the business district, had quickly and convincingly told the recruitment centre that Tory was working for him, helping the Republic cause by making weapons for the army.

A quick save that, thankfully, kept Tory from being conscripted during the Jedi Civil War that happened almost right after the end of the Mandalorian Wars.

Ben dropped her off at the docking pad of her apartment building. She thanked him profusely, and promised to call him on his comm if she needed his help at the next troubled business.

The glass elevator shot her up to the forty-second floor. Kae sat on the floor during the wait, too exhausted to stay upright. Her feet were killing her and the smoke and flashing lights of The Light Side had been burned into her retinas; a dull ache emanated from the backs of her eyes.

When she reached the forty-second floor, she managed to drag herself out of the elevator, shoes in hand. She trudged down the long corridor until she reached room 116, the apartment she shared with her best friend.

Just as she was going to enter the lock code on the keypad beside the door, she caught sight of a steady green bar of light at the top of the screen. A frown furrowed her brow. She thought it was too soon for Lee to be home from work, but the door was open, and neither of them ever forgot to lock it after getting broken into a few years back.

Cursing that she didn't have her pistol with her, or the tehk'la blade her mother had given to her for her eighteenth birthday, Kae pressed her finger onto a button on the keypad and the door hissed into the ceiling.

"Hey, sister!"

"Oh, it's only you." Kae stepped into the apartment, the door locking behind her with a _ding_, and tossed her shoes to the side. "Why are you here? Hi, Clara."

Tory leaped to his feet to engulf his sister in a hug, and his Miraluka girlfriend smiled from the couch. "We were waiting for you and Lee to get home. He'll be off soonish, I think he said. How was your night? You look like a slut, by the way."

"All Lee's doing." Kae pried herself from Tory's arms and slunk over to the couch. Collapsing beside Clara, she muttered, "My night was fine." She rubbed her face, finding it increasingly difficult to keep her eyes open. "How've you been, Clara?"

Born on Katarr, Clara had moved with her family to Taris when she was young, and then to Coruscant when she, the middle child of the family, became a teenager. She was blind, but Kae had never seen her stumble or need help doing something; she had once told Kae that all Miraluka were Force-sensitive, and by manipulating the Force they could see just as well as anyone else. With a petit, heart-shaped face, rosebud lips, and long, chestnut brown curls, she was quite beautiful. The only things detracting from her appearance were the vestigial eye sockets she usually covered with a white cloth and long fringe. The Miraluka weren't just blind: they had no eyes.

"I'm okay. I told my parents that I'm moving out today."

"How'd that go?"

"They pretended to be sad, but I'm sure they can't wait. They still have three more to leave, after all." Clara smiled and looked up at Tory, who was wandering into the kitchen to find something to eat. "They just don't really like that I'm moving in with Tory. They still think he's a bad influence."

Kae smiled. "He is. But you aren't addicted to spice or spitting out kids yet, so I guess you haven't been corrupted."

"I guess not. Have you got a man yet?"

"Nope."

"Is Lee stopping you?"

"He's trying to help, actually."

"Bullshit!" Tory shouted from the kitchen, his voice echoing off the walls. "Lee doesn't help anyone for shit!"

Kae rolled her eyes. "He just hates you, Tory!" she called, and stood up from the couch. "Ugh. I'm going to change. Are you guys going to stick around here after Lee gets off work?"

"I think so. It's too late to go out anyways. Most of the good places will be closing soon, and I don't want to go to that card place you and Lee always go to."

"Taeg's? Why not? It's the greatest place ever." Kae wandered into her room and quickly changed from the tight, revealing clothes Lee had chosen for her, into the baggy, shapeless tunic and trousers she had originally picked to go out in. By the time she went back into the living room, Tory was hunkered on the couch next to Clara, stuffing his face with a box of muja muffins stolen from Kae and Lee's pantry.

"So Lee tells me you're on a spice run," Tory remarked, a ghastly smirk crossing his sharply angular face as his twin slid onto the armchair across from them.

Kae rubbed her eyes, smearing makeup all over her cheeks and hands. "Yeah, sure I am. It's for work. There's a smuggling ring in the Uscru Entertainment District, and I'm supposed to stop them. That's why I was at The Light Side tonight."

"Find anything useful?" Clara was a secretary for one of the Republic senators, and had a strong belief in the law, just as Kae did. They both had always found it odd that the men closest to them were both scoundrels and cantina rats.

"Not at all. I'm supposed to do this undercover, so I can't just barge into a club and hold everyone at gunpoint while I have their pockets checked for contraband spice. As easy as that would be," Kae muttered, shaking her head. "I thought I had a lead when I found one of Lee's bimbo spice buddies, but she ended up being totally useless. She seemed like an idiot anyways."

"What did she do?"

"She brought me to the VIP section and told a Cathar that I was looking for something. The Cathar had no idea why she was being asked. She was nice, though. Seemed really interested in the fact that I'm Nagai."

"Isn't everyone?" Tory shoved two more muja muffins in his mouth and gave her a curious glance. "So you don't think this Cathar could've been a dealer?"

"The people around her were high, but she wasn't, and there was no sign of spice nearby. Every other spice dealer I've ever come across makes it painfully obvious what they're selling. I mean, her clothes were so tight, if she'd had glitterstim in her pockets, I would've seen it. I'm going to go to the places tomorrow and talk to the owners before going back at night. The girl I met in The Light Side is probably the closest thing I have to a suspect, since she acted like she knew where she could find spice for me."

Tory laughed and tossed his sister a muffin, which she caught deftly. "Just bring me or Lee with you when you go, sis. We can smell a spice dealer a mile away."

"I know," she replied dryly as she peeled the wrapper off the muffin, "but I can't bring civilians with me. I'm sure if I could, I'd have caught the conspirators in the smuggling ring by now. All I have for help is my partner from the CSF, and he's so shell-shocked from the Mandalorian Wars that he can't talk to people normally."

Tory flinched. It was a tic he had developed during his conscription crisis at the start of the war, and it had yet to fade away with time. Almost every time someone mentioned the war, Mandalorians, or armies, a strange look would pass over his face and he would automatically flinch.

They were saved from having to discuss Kae's work any longer when the door shot open and Lee stepped into the apartment, exhaustion dragging his face down into a scowl.

"Stop," he said, holding up a hand just as Tory was about to leap up from the couch and lunge at him in his peculiar brand of greeting. "I am in no mood for being pounced on right now, Tor. Hi, Kae, hi, Clara." He kicked off his boots and slumped onto Kae's lap, nearly crushing her into the chair.

"Tired?" she asked, lightly running her fingertips over his lekku. Hitting them too hard would knock him out—she'd learned _that _the hard way when they first started living together and she'd thrown something at his head during an argument—but he had always enjoyed light touches. He had once described it to Kae as feeling like a gentle massage that was almost always sure to calm him.

"Very. How was The Light Side?" Lee shifted his weight so his elbow wasn't digging into her gut and leaned his head on her shoulder with a sleepy sigh.

"I met Hanna."

"Oh. Nice girl."

"Huge boobs."

"Giant."

Kae grimaced as Tory flashed them a thumbs' up.

"She tried to get me spice from a Cathar named Quira."

Lee nestled in closer. "Never heard of her."

"Which means this Hanna girl really is your biggest suspect," Tory deduced, ramping up his natural Coruscanti inflection to imitate a pompous accent, "with the biggest breasts."

Clara punched his arm, and Lee muttered a thank you before passing out on Kae's shoulder.

"How are you so peppy all the time?" Kae demanded, easing her arm out from beneath Lee to move his lekku off her chest.

Tory merely grinned, showing off all of his perfect white teeth, and Clara said, "He drinks more coffee than is good for _anyone_."

"Onderonian?"

"Who do you take me for, sis? Speaking of, you got any?"

"Who do you take _me _for? It's in the pantry, near where you stole those muja muffins. Though I don't know why you'd want to drink coffee at this time of night."

Clara smiled and gave a little chuckle. "Well, he always was a little odd, wasn't he?"


	5. The hunt continues

THE SURFACE OF CORUSCANT, USCRU ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT

CORUSCANT, CORE WORLDS

Her hand on her hip, just barely grazing the CSF-issued Republic blaster pistol that was holstered there, she smiled warmly at the Twi'lek prostitutes leaning against the filth-streaked walls of the lower levels of the Uscru Entertainment District. The girls twittered greetings and waved their fingers, adjusting their weight to better display their curvaceous hips and breasts. They were under the protection of the CSF; on their regular route, Kae and Benny often stopped to talk to them, to make sure that they were being treated well despite their situation.

"How are you doing today?" she asked, coming up closer to them.

One of the girls, a little one with long lekku and bones that jutted out beneath her paper-thin green skin, gave a smile too big for her narrow face. "We're doing fine, Kae. How're you?"

"Good." Kae reached into her bag and pulled out a handful of snack bags. "Crisps?"

She and Benny had developed a routine of taking care of the girls. They would bring them little bits of food or blankets to make sure they were faring well.

The girls all grabbed up the bags; a few tucked them away, but most dug right in, famished from their tough lives.

As they crunched away, Kae gazed around the alleyway. Broken and rusted speeder parts littered the ground, surrounded by garbage of all types. A few streets down she could see a homeless man huddled beneath a ripped awning, cradling his few belongings around him, shining golden treasures of the underworld. Two local alcoholics stumbled into the nearest bar. Farther in the distance, Kae could hear the shrieks and hums of illegal swoop racing.

She inhaled deeply and held back a scowl. Ah, the surface of Coruscant in the Uscru Entertainment District. This was why she started working for the Coruscant Security Force: to help people who lived in the lowest of the low in Galactic City, who had no one else to defend them from the cruel injustices of the world. It wasn't right that people could commit these crimes—alien trafficking, spice smuggling—and expect to just get away with it.

The five Twi'lek prostitutes—who of whom were sisters who had been in slavery since their childhood on Ryloth—were Kae's favourite part of patrolling. Simply being able to talk to them, to find out about their lives and pasts and discuss ways to help them out: it was what Kae lived for when exploring the streets and lanes of the Uscru Entertainment District with Ben at her side and her pistol on her hip.

Also, they were amazing sources of reliable information.

"I was wondering something," she began, zipping up her jacket to fend away the bite of the fetid surface winds. "Have you noticed anything odd going around the district?"

"Everything," one girl said, and they all laughed.

Kae smiled. "Sure, that works. What I mean is directly related to spice smuggling."

"Smuggling? Nobody smuggles down here, Kae. Everyone's obvious about the spice they dealing."

The little green girl nudged Kae's arm. "Some people have been delivering lots of crates," she whispered, standing on her toes in her high-platform shoes to reach Kae's ear. "All unlabelled. That's not too common down here."

Kae glanced at the other girls for confirmation. Two nodded. "Did you see where they were taking them?"

"No, ma'am. But I can keep an eye out for you."

"I can get you sandwiches next time," Kae promised with a wink, and the girls all grinned. "If you can let me know where they're going with the crates, and what they look like?"

"Sure can."

Kae smiled and quickly gave the girls hugs. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Remember to comm me if anything happens."

"We will, Kae. Don't worry about us."

She waved and strode away, rounding the corner to the main street of the surface in the district. Bars and shady family-run casinos lined both sides of the street, and men in long coats or women in tall shoes and revealing clothing flaunted their wares at every corner. Every time she set foot on the surface of the planet, she thanked whatever higher being that her parents had the money to raise she and Tory in a decent part of town, far from the seedy crime of Galactic City. If they hadn't been such vital parts of their children's lives, or such moralistic role models, Tory could have easily sunk deeper into the hedonism of the Underworld, and dragged Kae along with him.

None of the businesses on the surface of the district had filed complaints with the CSF. They were run by crime lords, and if they weren't, they had money owed to crime lords for protection from gangs. There was a whole societal system of the Underworld that the rich in their skyscraper apartments had no inkling of. Wrong as it was, it still functioned as their own twisted mockery of a government. There were businessmen, politicians, rulers. Everything one needed for a society, however bent it was.

Kae walked down the street, dodging puddles of acid rain and filth, until she reached the speeder she had parked next to one of the only decent businesses on the surface. Lee hadn't needed it; he was working all day, and had offered her his vehicle for her research.

She eased into the seat of the speeder with a heavy sigh. The surface was never a pleasant experience. She only ever wanted to go when she went to Taeg's Pazaak Den with Lee; and Taeg's was part of the nicer section of the surface district.

Starting up the speeder with a hum, she lifted from the ground and pointed the nose up into the air traffic above her. Pausing for the moment, she quickly entered the coordinates to a higher level. The victims of the spice smuggling ring weren't restricted only to the seedy surface.

She spent the rest of the daylight hours going from business to business, seeking out owners and managers to ask questions about the spice ring. They all gave her similar answers: they had seen shadowy people move around their business, just outside, with heavy crates or small boxes, and occasionally they came inside and vanished into hidden corners or bathrooms, anywhere there wouldn't be cameras, droids, or bouncers looking for them to catch them smuggling spice.

As she sat in Lee's speeder outside a diner whose owner she had just finished questioning, Kae pondered how she would go about finding the smugglers. She had been right by her tactics in The Light Side; if anyone would be dealing or hiding contraband drugs, they wouldn't be obvious about it. Hence the alcoves, though her lead at the nightclub had been a wild shyrack chase and a dead end. Although she hadn't heard anything from other sectors of the CSF, she doubted the smuggling was limited only to the Uscru Entertainment District. The Works probably had something of a problem, being a rougher part of Galactic City; Kae figured the only place that was certain to be free was the Senate. With the guards and senators stalking the streets and rotunda, no smuggler would be daring—or stupid—enough to try their hand at spice.

Maybe, she thought wildly, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel of the speeder, the smuggling ring extended _past _Coruscant! The smugglers could be from Nar Shaddaa or Nal Hutta or Toydaria or Ryloth, spreading their 'goods' to contacts across the galaxy. The seditious fingers of crime stretched far across the Republic. She wouldn't be surprised if this was the work of a figure off-planet.

Unfortunately, there were countless gangsters who worked in the smuggling ring: prime examples were the Hutts of Nal Hutta or Tatooine. And there were even some criminals who weren't even big name, like the low-key smugglers from Corellia. The sudden crime wave washing over Coruscant could originate from anywhere.

Kae chewed on her lip, staring out the windshield at the vast stretch of Galactic City in front of her. She would find out who was working the smuggling on Coruscant, and she would discover the ringleader of the whole operation. Maybe she would even be promoted. She could head her own sector of the CSF.

She sighed and ran her fingers through her short black hair. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Kaekoletai," she murmured, slowly shaking her head to clear her mind of her reverie. "Still got to find the person who's organizing the smuggling in Uscru before you can be a galactic hero."

Kae switched on the speeder and gently nosed it off the docking pad and into the air traffic whirring by. Night would soon fall; she had just enough time to get home and change into plainclothes before heading out to pick up more clues.

As she sped through the air toward Uscru-North, she set her comlink into the clip on the speeder console. Following a short beep, she said, "Benjamin Jurhic." The console beeped again as it scanned the frequencies in her comlink.

Static blared through the speakers, then a tinny voice said, "Yeah?"

"Benny, it's Kae."

"Oh, good afternoon, Detective. What can I do for you?" His voice was crackly through static as she passed through a particularly thin spot between the Uscru Entertainment District and Uscru-North.

"I was just wondering if you wanted to go for dinner tonight," she suggested, smiling to herself. Gently manipulating the controls of the speeder, she nudged beside the next lane of traffic and dropped beneath the other speeders.

There was a long silence from the console speaker. Finally, as she was nearing the docking pad of her apartment building, the crackly electric voice said, "All right. Where do you want to meet?"

"There's a really nice diner in Uscru," Kae said. She eased the speeder into the parking space allotted to her and Lee. "I can send you the coordinates. See you soon, Benny." Kae severed the link, plucked up her comlink, and made a beeline for the elevators to get ready for her date.


	6. A diner, a lead, and a new team

ZELINSKI'S, USCRU ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT

CORUSCANT, CORE WORLDS

"This is what you call a 'really nice' diner?" Ben asked doubtfully as he stepped into Zelinski's. Kae smirked and sidled past her partner. In the lower levels of Uscru, Zelinski's wasn't an ideal location for eating—or anything, really aside from maybe defecating on the floor. Kae had visited the diner earlier in the day and had interviewed the owner, a pleasant Quermian fellow; the diner was a nice enough place, but the location brought in the shadier characters of Uscru.

"They've had a lot of problems," Kae murmured, carefully avoiding making eye contact with a grubby Chalactan huddling in a corner booth. "Here, we can sit over there." She pointed to a clean-looking booth across from a counter. They nestled opposite each other and leaned across the table to face each other, arms crossed. "Keep an eye out on people, eh?" she whispered. "This is one of the hotspots for smuggling, according to the datapad from the office."

Ben's brows arched. "You don't think we'll look suspicious by talking like… like this?" He gestured to the table they sat at; speckles of indeterminable dirt and streaks of filth covered the surface of the once white tabletop, and holes and slash marks covered the mint green seats so the stuffing puffed out.

"Look at everyone else here. I think we'll fit in perfectly."

Kae leaned back and smiled lopsidedly as a middle-aged Mirialan walked up to their table. The only things distinguishing her as an employee rather than another customer were the stained apron and equally dirty pad of paper she held loosely in her yellowish hands.

She looked at them expectantly without bothering to speak.

"I'll have an Onderonian coffee."

"Just water, please," Ben said politely.

The Mirialan nodded, wrote something down, and slumped away.

Kae leaned back, drumming her fingernails on the table, and casually surveyed the diner. Other than the two of them and the dirty Chalactan, there were three other customers in the restaurant, all of different humanoid races that Kae couldn't determine without obviously staring at them. Any one of them could be involved in the smuggling ring, or be completely innocent bystanders.

The waitress returned a few minutes later and unceremoniously plunked their drinks on the table before slouching toward one of the other tables to half-heartedly wipe it down.

They sat in the silence for several minutes, sipping at their drinks and idly watching the diner. The Chalactan eventually left, muttering to himself as he went, but nothing else changed dramatically while they sat.

After a while, Kae shifted and pushed herself out of the booth. "I'm going to go to the bathroom," she said softly, and padded across the tiled floor to the door marked bathroom. Unsurprisingly for such a small, unobtrusive business, there was only one room for both sexes. Uncaring, Kae went through the door.

Two men and a woman were standing by the sinks. They barely glanced up as she entered, then bent their heads and continued muttering to each other. Kae moved past them and slipped into one of the stalls.

"There'll be a ship leaving in the Crimson Corridor," one of the males said. His voice was rough and gravelly, making the Bocce he spoke difficult to understand. Because their parents took education very seriously, Kae and Tory had gone to high class schools in their youth, and had each learned the most common languages aside from Galactic Basic; as well, because of her position in the CSF, Kae added a few more to her list of understandable tongues.

"Where is it going?" This was the second man; he seemed to be having difficultly pronouncing the strange Bocce words.

"Telos."

"In two days' time," the female spoke up.

Kae leaned forward, discreetly going closer to the stall door to better hear their conversation. Her heart was racing beneath her breast, thudding frantically as she listened to their words.

"Will he be staying on Coruscant?" the second man inquired.

"No. Both of them are leaving."

"Okay. I'll figure it out."

There was some shuffling and rustling, and the woman said, "Here. Glitterstim. Should last 'til you reach Telos."

Kae's jaw dropped. Being in plainclothes for the investigation, she didn't have her blaster pistol with her, but after the brief break-in scare when Tory and Clara were in her home, she began taking her tehk'la blade with her wherever she went. As she listened to them whisper to each other about credits, she slowly bent and gently tugged the coiled hilt of the knife from the inside of her boot. The serrated edge followed, and she held it behind her, flushed the toilet to make it seem nonchalant, and opened the stall door.

One of the men had left; it was impossible to tell which. The other two gave her dark looks as she moved up beside them under the pretence of washing her hands. Just as they were about to move past her, she held out the tehk'la blade and they both froze.

"Don't move," she said firmly, holding the point at them as she used her free hand to pluck her badge from her pocket. "Detective Kaekoletai Luka of the Coruscant Security Force: Uscru Sector. You are both under arrest for the sale of illegal substances."

Behind her, the door hissed open and something whirred. "You're loud, Detective," Ben remarked, before moving up beside her, pointing his pistol at the two. "Officer Benjamin Jurhic. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

The woman, some type of tall humanoid, sent her partner a hazardous glower. "You fucking idiot," she hissed. "I knew you'd get us caught."

The man said nothing and the two only barely struggled as Ben cuffed them and pushed them back into the diner. Kae followed, still wielding her tehk'la blade and silently bursting with pride. This was the first step to finding the leaders of the smuggling ring, and cleaning up the streets of Uscru for the rest of the population.

The Quermian owner of Zelinski's had emerged from his office during Kae's time in the bathroom. She gave him a smile and a little wave before following Ben and the prisoners from the diner. Leaving Lee's speeder parked and locked, she helped the prisoners into the safe backseat of Ben's police speeder and climbed into the passenger side. Ben handed her his pistol. After getting comfortable in her seat, she aimed the pistol at the two humanoids and kept it there as Ben started up the speeder and aimed it into the traffic that would lead them to the CSF head of Uscru Entertainment District. The ride was short; Ben turned on his sirens and they had a straight path through the traffic.

Once they reached the station, the two dealers were immediately confiscated from their possession and taken into custody by two other officers. Freed of their burden, Kae and Ben moved through the crowded lobby toward the elevators that would take them down to the interrogation rooms. As they neared, they spotted one of the forensic specialists, a Chiss man by the name of Tu'Kira Oudo. He grinned as he saw them and gave a little wave.

"Thanks for the work, guys," he said with a smile. He held up a well-sealed plastic box and flicked the side so it gave a low thud. "This gives me something fun to work on."

"What is it?" Ben asked, frowning as he peered at it.

"The stuff the interrogators confiscated from your perps. It looks like regular glitterstim, but I'm going to check it out, see if it's been anywhere but the place it was produced. Chief's going to probably send out more guys to search the area around Zelinski's. There might be more spice hiding somewhere, if these guys are related to the smuggling ring," Tu'Kira informed, carefully setting the box on a nearby ledge so he could reach behind his head and quickly tighten his short ponytail of thick black waves.

"They have to be." Kae gave the small, uninteresting box a small scowl. "They were at one of the places reported to have spice smuggling problems, and they were talking about ships leaving the planet in the Crimson Corridor. That's about as secretive as you're going to get."

"I suppose so. You two should go chat it up with the chief if you have any extra information." Tu'Kira picked up the box and gave them a little salute, blood red eyes glittering pleasantly in the bright florescent light of the corridor, and wound past them to head for his office and begin her work.

Kae and Ben continued down the hallway. As they went, Ben made a thoughtful noise and remarked, "That Tu'Kira is a nice boy."

Kae nudged her partner, holding back an internal shudder as she bumped into his prosthetic arm. "Maybe you should ask him out, Benny," she teased, smirking.

Ben chuckled awkwardly. "Oh, please, Detective, that's ridiculous."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, Benny."

"Nagai wisdom?"

Kae smirked and held open the door to the main interrogation room. "How I lived my life when I turned twenty, actually," she said dryly. "But sure, it's how my brother lives too. It could be Nagai wisdom." They both slipped into the room.

—

"Good news," Tu'Kira said as he stepped into the break room. Kae was leaning with her elbows on the table, waiting while Ben went back to Zelinski's to pick up her speeder; while he was gone, she was supposed to write out their report for the arrest. She glanced up, tired, to see the Chiss entering the room, his white lab coat draped over his arm. "I talked to the chief. Me and Ben are officially part of your investigation."

Kae's brows lifted. "Really? What made him change it up?"

Tu'Kira tossed his coat on the table and slid onto the bench opposite Kae. "Because I'm the best forensic specialist we've got in Uscru Sector, obviously. Like I thought, the spice in the box was little more than your regular variety glitterstim. No chemicals added; no toxic mix of other spices. But the box was a little more helpful. Not only was it covered in fingerprints—"

"Idiot perps," Kae muttered.

"—but there was possibility that this box wasn't only just here on Coruscant during its life. It was made on Telos Four."

"How can you tell?"

"The lid," Tu'Kira said confidently. "It has fibres and materials that were only produced on Telos before it was bombarded during the war. And it's very Telosian in the way it's made." Seeing Kae's look of confusion, the Chiss man shrugged, neatly folding his blue hands together on the table. "You notice these things when it's your job to."

"Telos…" Kae sat up and ran a hand through her hair in frustration. Tu'Kira watched in polite silence. "The three I overheard at the diner mentioned Telos. The ship leaving the Crimson Corridor is going there in two days." She glanced down at the datapad she had been issued for her report; she had only managed to write that they were at Zelinski's Diner when the arrest occurred. "They also said that these two people were both leaving when the ship was. They might be the ringleaders of the smugglers."

Tu'Kira smiled. "Go talk to the chief, then. We should probably stop this ship before it can leave the planet."

"Oh, probably. Might be a good idea." Kae stood and tucked away the report datapad. "If you see Benny when he gets back, let him know where I've gone, eh?"

Tu'Kira nodded, a few locks of loose black hair falling over his smooth blue forehead. "Can do. Hey, question: doesn't he mind when you call him that? Being a stoic war hero and all…"

Kae shrugged and shouldered her bag. "He hasn't said anything in all the years we've been working together. I'll see you soon, Tu'Kira." She quickly turned and made a beeline for the door out of the break room. It was on the same floor as the chief's office; she could already see her destination after turning one corner and passing the glass doors of the elevators. When she reached the chief's office, she pressed a button on the keypad beside the door. A moment later, she was inside.

The chief smiled up at her, lines deepening on his face. "How's the report on the arrest coming, Detective Luka?"

Kae glanced down at her bag. "Uh, great. Chief, I know you'll see it in the report, but it'll take too long to process. In two days, a ship is leaving the Crimson Corridor with a man in possession of illegal glitterstim sold by our perps, and two other suspect smugglers will be leaving the planet at the same time. We have to keep that ship from leaving Coruscant airspace, or we'll lose our smuggling suspects."

"Where are they headed for?"

"Telos Four. It's in the interrogation records Officer Jurhic and I got from the perps earlier today."

"I'll contact the chief of the CSF in the Crimson Corridor; if all goes to plan, I'll send you, Officer Jurhic, and Mr Oudo with backup from both sectors to apprehend the smugglers before they can go off-planet. Finish your report and you're done for the night."

"Thank you, sir." Kae turned and left the office, toying with the strap of her bag as she went back to the break room. It was as lucky a break as anyone could have hoped for. They had two smugglers and dealers of illegal spice in custody and they were going to catch a ship full of them in only two mere days.

When she re-entered the break room, Tu'Kira was still seated there, crimson gaze lost on the glowing blue screen of a datapad on the table in front of him. Ben was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey, Tu'Kira," Kae called. He glanced up as she approached and gave a little smile. "Did Ben stop by?" She sat opposite him and pulled the datapad away from his gaze. It was on an informative page about the exports from Telos IV prior to Admiral Saul Karath's bombardment of the planet's surface. Even on his breaks he continued hunting down evidence for his work.

"Yeah." He looked relieved to have the datapad taken away. "He said to tell you that he's going home for the night, and to say goodnight to you."

"Thanks. When are you off?"

The Chiss leaned back and stretched, his long, lanky arms high above his head. "Ugh, I've got another four hours to go. Late shift today; got to figure out that box of spice. Plus, chief's street men are bringing in a stolen swoop full of contraband spice from Zelinski's docking pad," he added tiredly. He ran his hands over his face, and as usual Kae was amazed at the beautiful colour of his skin. Like all Chiss, he had pure azure flesh and blood red eyes, both of which changed brightness depending on the oxygen level of the air around him. It was the strangest, most beautiful thing she thought she had ever seen in a Near-Human body. "I'm going to have a lot to do for the next few days."

Kae glanced at a clock on the wall. It was getting toward evening; Lee would be off work soon. "Do you play pazaak?"

"What? Sure, sometimes."

"Tell you what: when you're off work, come meet me and my friend at Taeg's Pazaak Den. It's the best place to relax after work, unless you're a spice addict or alcoholic—and even then, it caters well to those crowds," she said with a smirk. Tu'Kira's jet black brows arched up, and Kae giggled. "It's a lot of fun, I promise. Loosen tension before our big break."

"Yeah? And who's your friend?"

"Lees'anah. He's a really cool guy, I swear."

"Well, I guess if you put it that way…" Tu'Kira winked and snatched up his datapad. "I'll see you then, Kae."

"Have fun working," she said, giving him a little wave as he stood from the table and started to make his way back down to the forensic labs.

Kae watched him as he left, then stood and left the break room. Lee would be back at the apartment in no time, and since it was the first time he would be meeting any of her coworkers, she had to prepare him—or really, she thought as she headed for the elevators, crammed with men and women ready to go home after a long day, she should have prepared Tu'Kira for Lee.


	7. A night of pazaak

TAEG'S PAZAAK DEN, USCRU ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT

CORUSCANT, CORE WORLDS

After sending Lee off to the bar to order her a drink, Kae moved past a group of regulars at Taeg's—including the little Gran who had been sorely beaten by Lan Renner the Cordellian/Mandalorian last time she and Lee had visited the pazaak den. She waited patiently, hands in the pockets of her pants, until a few new customers went safely past S0 and Graalbacc's security checks. Once the two were free, she slipped up next to them and nudged the Wookiee's arm.

"Hey, Graalbacc," she greeted, smiling warmly. "Hey, S0. Can you guys do me a favour?"

The droid perked up and whirred as it turned to face her. "Oh, Kaekoletai! It has almost been a week since you and Lees'anah have joined us."

The Wookiee growled something and tugged Kae into a warm, furry hug. She squawked and clumsily hugged him back before her released her with a barking Wookiee laugh. "Thanks, buddy," she gasped, pulling fur from her mouth. "A friend of mine will be here soon. Can you send him over to me and Lee when he gets here? He's never been here before, and he'll probably get lost or get sucked into one of the bad tables."

Graalbacc woofed and nodded, baring his long canine teeth in a big smile, and S0's photoreceptors flickered as it said, "Yes, of course, Kaekoletai. Who is he?"

"His name is Tu'Kira Oudo. He's a Chiss."

"Certainly. Where will you and Lees'anah be?"

"At the bar. Don't let him get lost, boys," she said with a smile. "Thanks."

"You are welcome, Kaekoletai," the droid beeped, and Graalbacc whined happily. Giving them a little wave, she turned and wove back through the crowd to find Lee spinning idly on a stool at the bar, an empty glass held loosely in his fingers. He grinned, his white teeth shining behind red lips, as Kae approached the counter.

"So when's the work buddy coming down, babe?" he asked, plunking the glass on the countertop. "I can't wait to see if he's good enough for my Kae-Kae."

Kae laughed and got comfortable on the stool next to him. "Tarisian ale, Taeg," she said, grinning at the Rodian. The owner grunted and turned away to get her drink. "He's great, Lee, I promise. Another weirdly coloured dude in my life, just like you."

"Hey. I'm supposed to be the only weirdly colourful dude in your life. I don't like this guy," Lee decided, giving her a mockery of a scowl.

"It'll be great. Oh, did I tell you that I finally told my partner about you?"

"Scary Mandalorian War vet?"

"That's the one."

"What'd you say?"

"Well, he said I looked nice when we went to The Light Side," she explained, thanking Taeg with a nod as she plucked up the tall glass of Tarisian ale, "and I said it was all your doing, and he thought you were a woman, and when I corrected him, he then thought you were gay. I don't think he has a good impression of you so far."

Lee smirked and waggled his fingers to signal the bartender droid for a refill of whatever strange concoction he chose to drink that night. "Hm. I'm glad you didn't invite the scary Mandalorian War vet then. I can deal with a quirky Chiss geek, so long as he knows I'm straight, and that if he fucks you over at all, I'll be there with your brother to kick his sorry blue ass. Is that him?" he said suddenly, pointing to a very tall, lanky man standing uncomfortably near Graalbacc and S0-B3-GE3. Sure enough, with clear azure skin, florescent crimson eyes, and jet black hair, it was Tu'Kira waiting at the entrance. Kae grinned and waved just as the droid gestured to the direction of the bar.

As Tu'Kira trotted up to them, Lee made a soft noise in his throat; just when the Chiss came within earshot, Lee's lekku twitched and gyrated, and he quickly muttered something very offensive in Twi'leki that Kae just barely caught.

Feeling her face heat up and give her pale flesh some much needed colour, she stood from her barstool and tugged Tu'Kira to the stool next to her. "Hey. How was the rest of your night?" she asked, sitting back down and sipping at her ale. Lee was silent beside her, but she could see his lekku moving from the corner of her eye. She was certain that if she could understand silent lekku speak at all, she would be horrified know what horrible obscenities Lee was uttering.

"Boring. But we confirmed that the box was made on Telos before the bombardment. As if that gets us anywhere," he added with a cynical tone. He gave a slight smile and ran his hand over his black waves. "Is this your friend?"

"Oh!" Kae roughly elbowed Lee in the ribs, and his lekku froze up as he gasped. "Tu'Kira, this is my best friend and roommate, Lees'anah. Lee, this is my co-worker, Tu'Kira Oudo."

The two men reached in front of her to shake hands. "Nice to meet you," Tu'Kira said politely.

"Yeah, you too. Get a drink, man. You play pazaak much?"

"Clearly not as much as you and Kae do. I've never even heard of this place before." He ordered a juma juice from Taeg, then they all left the bar and shuffled through the pazaak den until they reached an empty table. Kae settled on a chair to the side, urging Tu'Kira and Lee to start the first round.

They played for several hours; the room grew smokier and darker as the night progressed, and they worked through several drinks each before Tu'Kira admitted defeat and handed Lee his credits.

"You win, Lee," he laughed, grinning as he reached for his drink. "You're a pretty tricky pazaak player."

"Thank you, thank you, kind sir." Lee took another puff on his pipe of gree and leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. "Y'know, Chiss, you aren't a bad guy. I was expecting some pervert macking up on my baby Kae. Not that I've got a problem with that, but at least let him be some sexy, muscular Human guy, with a huge—"

"Lee!"

"—love for the law, not a skinny blue geek."

Kae gasped and felt her face heat up, but Tu'Kira merely laughed and sipped at his drink. "I'm her _co-worker_. I adore the law. And _you're _red."

"But I'm not a skinny geek."

"Touché."

Leaning across the table, Kae shot Lee a stern look and asked in halting Twi'leki, "Was that really necessary, Lee? You're being so rude." An impressive feat for a Near-Human to be speaking Twi'leki—one of the languages her parents insisted she and Tory learn—made less impressive for the fact that she was missing minor words, due to her lack of lekku.

Lee blinked owlishly. "He didn't mind, did he?" he replied blandly. "And not like he _denied _trying to get his mack on. Something to consider, eh, Kae-Kae?"

Tu'Kira cleared his throat; Kae and Lee glanced over at him. "I can understand Twi'leki, you know," he said—in Galactic Basic—with an embarrassed smirk pulling up into slightly flushed cheeks. "Or, at least, some of it."

"It's all in good fun," Lee said, and shoved back his chair with a metallic squeak. "I'm going to bathroom, then I'm getting my drink refilled. Don't have too much fun without me." He winked and sauntered away, whistling a jaunty tune under his breath as he went.

Kae watched until he vanished behind a loud group of aliens, then turned and grabbed Tu'Kira's hand. "I'm so sorry about him," she said, almost frantically. "He doesn't know boundaries, especially once he's been drinking or smoking."

"He's fun, don't worry about it. I should really get going though. I have an early morning." He smiled and climbed out of his chair; Kae followed suit.

"More research on our spice box?"

Tu'Kira held out an arm to give her room to walk beside her through the gathering crowd. "You bet. I hope we can track down what part of Telos it was made on prior to the bombardment, just to see if that can lead us anywhere before we stop those guys from leaving the Crimson Corridor."

Kae smiled at Graalbacc and S0 as they passed between the pair of bouncers, then a frown furrowed her brow. "But because of the bombardment, the location of where the box was made will be irrelevant unless you can track down the exact manufacturer, and even then they might not even be on Citadel Station anymore. Czerka might have kicked them off," she pointed out as they left the club and meandered at a relaxed pace toward the speeder docks. "Or paid them to leave quietly."

"See, I pointed that out to the other forensic specialist I'm working with, but he seemed certain that the manufacturer will still be on Citadel Station, and that they will be willing to give us sale records from before the bombardment, if they even still have them. Even so, it's our best lead behind the covert trip from Crimson Corridor," he said with a shrug, "so we have to look into it as much as we possibly can." He slowed his pace when they reached a new airspeeder polished to perfection. "Well, here I am."

Kae arched her brows at the speeder. "Nice ride. Aratech. Excellent choice."

"I got a cozy job—and really good contacts," he said with a smirk as he leaned on the door of the speeder. "This was fun. When we aren't busy chasing down smugglers, we'll have to do this again sometime. Get me better at pazaak so I don't continually lose to your roommate. Fun guy, by the way."

"Yeah? He didn't traumatize you too much?"

"I'll recover. Unimaginably crude. Considering you and I have worked together for… whenever it was you got promoted—"

"Three years ago."

"That's the one. I just never expected you to be close friends with a pervert. He's fun, but a bit of a creep," Tu'Kira said, arching thick dark eyebrows.

Kae laughed and stole another glance back at Taeg's. Lee would be wondering where she was, but she knew he wouldn't be too concerned. He would probably just assume she went home with Tu'Kira or got lost in a pazaak game with a stranger. "He is. Would it surprise you to learn that I used to be just as crude? Cruder, if at all possible, because girls are flirts and I have a twin brother who is just as close to him as I am," she added, looking back up at him.

His crimson eyes glittered in the fluorescent light, and Kae noticed that they were a slight shade or two darker than they had been inside the den, or at CSF. Clearer oxygen in the air, or something similar. She wasn't quite sure how Chiss worked. "I'll have to meet him one day too. Does he have a well-rounded girl in his life other than you?"

"His girlfriend is the secretary of a senator."

"Brilliant. Those boys should be kept in line. I had better go. Comm me anytime you're bored or have more Telosian boxes to inspect," he said, and clapped a hand on her shoulder before climbing into his speeder and shooting into the low surface traffic heading south.

Kae watched until the speeder vanished into the traffic and the darkness swallowed the light glinting off its polished sides.

"Spiffy speeder," a slurred voice said from behind her.

"Aratech," she replied, smiling as she turned and spotted Lee standing behind her, leaning lazily on a lamppost. His lekku dangled behind him, twitching somewhat in his intoxication. A slight smile adorned his lips, and his green eyes were hazy and out of focus as he gazed at her.

"Very nice. Good choice, babe. I approve. Take me home. I'm drunk."

Kae rolled her eyes and marched to his side, grabbed his arm, and steered him, wobbling all the while, back to their speeder.


	8. The Kobalos

CRIMSON CORRIDOR, ZI-KREE SECTOR

CORUSCANT, CORE WORLDS

There were ten of them in total, hunched behind a pockmarked rubbish bin and rusting Hyrotii Corporation EasyRide passenger air taxi. The repulsorlift engine in the rubbish bin had malfunctioned or been purposefully destroyed long ago, and it rested on its side, allowing an excellent view through a hole in the bottom, and the air taxi was toppled over with the open seats facing them, giving the perfect amount of room for someone to hide.

Of course, that someone was just a little too tall to fit comfortably given the space they had, and he harboured a particular aversion to rotted and sludge-covered upholstery.

"This is foul," Tu'Kira muttered angrily as he hastily gathered his forensic equipment into a durasteel box at his feet. The Telosian glitterstim box was in a plastic bag on the ground beside him, perfectly protected from the harsh elements of one of Coruscant's worst crime neighbourhoods, just as its owner was; Tu'Kira was hunched in a warm overcoat, a knitted cap holding his unruly waves away from his face. "Absolutely disgusting. Somebody should clean up the Crimson Corridor."

"If you want to fork over the money yourself, Oudo," one of the officers behind her grunted. Kae smirked, but kept her gaze trained ahead of her, through the hole in the rubbish bin.

Tu'Kira cursed again, and one of the other men chuckled and remarked, "Other Chiss I've met have been all stern and emotionless. Why're you broken, Kira?"

"Just like Detective's a broken Nagai?" Ben said, and the other men laughed.

"Shh, boys, honestly." Kae looked over her shoulder at the officers assembled behind her, and they quickly hushed up. "Do you really want to blow our cover before our perps even get here?"

Tu'Kira snorted and gathered up the Telosian box. "Listen to the lady," he muttered.

Kae arched her brows, then returned her gaze to her macrobinoculars. They were stationed at the only section in the Crimson Corridor large enough to house interplanetary aircraft, and had been waiting since the day began at midnight. All were exhausted, even after several coffee trips to a nearby café, but they didn't dare take turns resting. They had been given no indication of the time when the ship was supposed to leave, only the day, and the only cement fact they had was that two perps in the smuggling ring would be leaving Coruscant through the Crimson Corridor. Not a lot to work with, but there was a reason the chief had sent Kae along with Ben, Tu'Kira, and seven other officers—another forensic specialist and two detectives from the CSF: Zi-Kree Sector, two officers and a detective from Uscru, as well as a sharpshooter from the CSF in the Senate District. Kae had been nervous when the chiefs of Uscru and Zi-Kree assured her that he was necessary to their safety, just in case the perps tried to flee during confrontation.

Kae hoped it wouldn't get to that point, but she knew better than to underestimate the chiefs' opinions and experience.

Through her macrobinoculars, she could see the entire flat area on the surface that they had been spying on for the past eighteen hours. Crumbling buildings across the plaza, the silhouettes of Coruscanti skyscrapers jutting harshly into the orange skyline; depressingly dehydrated plants stood skeletal and thin around the edges of the square, and the slowly setting sun cast dramatic shadows across broken tiles. It was picturesque, in a slightly disturbing way.

Armed with a CSF-issued blaster pistol, her tehk'la blade, heavy boots and a helmet with specialized visor that would at least attempt to deflect blaster bolts—she doubted its ability to completely work, but she hoped the designers knew what they were doing—and a reinforced combat vest, Kae was sweltering but snug, and completely prepared for anything that would come their way. The others were dressed similarly, though the sharpshooter wore somewhat less bulk to give him more mobility if necessary, save for the forensic scientists, who were dressed in plainclothes.

Kae's comlink beeped and she instantly clapped a hand to stifle the sound. Still holding the macrobinoculars to her eyes, she reached for the comm and held it up. "Yeah?"

There was a slight burst of static, then the sharpshooter said, "Shadow moved at ten o'clock."

Kae followed the direction and carefully adjusted the view on her binoculars. Sure enough, something shuffled in the darkness beside a durasteel lean-to marked with blaster slag. "Roger. Keep an eye on it. I'll keep surveying the plaza." The line went dead, and she dropped her comlink back into her lap. Everything else in the plaza was dead. It was almost as if the place had been cleared out specifically for their stakeout.

Odd. Kae hadn't been to the Crimson Corridor—or Zi-Kree—enough times to judge whether or not this was suspicious.

It was only another fifteen minutes later when the distinctive hum of a spaceship began to descend on the Crimson Corridor. Kae started to lower the macrobinoculars to look up—because really, who needed binoculars to spot an interplanetary cruiser?—when an abrupt movement in the shadows to the left stole her attention.

The comlink shot up to her mouth quicker than she anticipated. "Ten o'clock!" she hissed, just as two figures casually sauntered from the shadows b the lean-to. As soon as she spotted them, she swore louder than she meant to. "I know them! I recognize each of them! We have identification for our perps!"

"Fuck, Kae, they're going to hear you!" Tu'Kira growled, and the sharpshooter started to reply, but Kae dropped her macrobinoculars and bolted upright. A tall, lanky man with messy, dark auburn hair and scruffy trousers, and a feline woman with golden fur…

"Quira and Lan Renner!"

"Who?"

"Detective!"

Kae swore loudly; one of the perps turned to follow the noise, and Ben grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back into cover before they could be caught. "I know them!" she snarled, scrambling to catch her balance. The other men were staring at her, with the exception of the sharpshooter, who was too far away to catch the entire commotion. "I met that Mandalorian bastard at Taeg's Pazaak Den and thought nothing of him! And that Cathar bitch—she was at The Light Side the night we went, Benny! I was led straight to her and there was no evidence to even _think _of her as an unsub! I spoke to her in that Forceforsaken lounge surrounded by spice junkies on the whim of a brainless slut, but that idiot girl was right! How could I be so stupid?"

"It isn't your fault, Detective," Ben murmured soothingly. He held both her shoulders, keeping her firmly planted on the ground despite her seething and fidgeting. "There was no proof or evidence of any kind that either of them were involved, save for the word of one partygoer. Relax. We have their identification, and we are going to stop them." He grabbed up her fallen comlink, where a stream of static steadily issued. "Hennessy? Yes, this is Jurhic. We have potential positive identification for our perps. Prepare to fire at will." He shoved her comlink back into a pocket on her vest and gave her a stormy stare. "Detective, pull yourself together. We need to catch these two before they escape to Telos, and trust me, it will be a lot easier arresting them here than trusting Telos Security Force with this. They could be anywhere on Citadel Station, and here they are in front of us."

Kae returned his stare with equal ferocity. "I'm not letting them get away with this," she said through her teeth. "They fooled me once, but it sure isn't happening again."

Ben nodded sharply and turned to give orders to the other officers, but before a single word could leave his lips, a burst of static erupted from Kae's pocket. She hastily wrenched out her comlink and switched on the frequency just in time to hear a jolt of blaster fire, a scream, and a muffled thump.

All was silent at the stakeout for several long heartbeats.

"Hennessy?" Kae whispered. Her entire body went cold, and she could only hear the blood rushing through her ears. "Hennessy, are you there?"

Something scraped on the other end, then an unfamiliar, raspy voice replied, "Hennessy can't talk right now, Detective. Maybe later you can join him and ask all you want then."

The frequency cut out a moment later.

A string of colourful expletives found their way from Kae's lungs as she frantically crammed her comm back into her pocket and yanked the blaster pistol out of its holster on her hip. Gun in her right hand, tehk'la blade in her left, she adjusted her helmet and started to stand.

"Detective, what are you doing?"

"Kae!"

"Do you have a death wish?"

"Hennessy didn't," she snapped, glowering at the men hastily gathering their equipment together. "I'm not letting them get away with this. There was a mole, and I'm going to find out who it was, no matter the cost." With that, she straightened out and lunged past the fallen rubbish bin.

As she dodged past the fallen debris that littered the plaza, she stole another glance at the ship that was hovering just above the ground. It was just a drop ship, not a cruiser, as she first suspected. It would take them to the real ship in Coruscant airspace. This was worse than she thought.

Renner and Quira were already aboard, apparently unconcerned with the assault on the stakeout. Several other shady characters had emerged from the buildings surrounding the plaza and were merging into a growing crowd in front of the drop ship; this wasn't a special delivery to take Renner and Quira to Telos. It was a refugee ship for criminals and the poverty-struck living in the Crimson Corridor.

Kae melted into the crowd. As soon as she was hidden between two indiscernible aliens who dwarfed her, she unbuckled her helmet and tossed it aside, then ripped off her combat vest and let it get trampled beneath the feet of the coming throng. With sweat-spiked hair, bearing weapons, she knew she would fit in perfectly.

Just as she neared the ramp to the drop ship, a hand grabbed her arm. She swivelled on her heel, nearly knocking into one of the aliens, then breathed a sigh of relief to calm her frantic heart when she saw it was Tu'Kira who held her.

"What do you think you're _doing?_" he demanded in a harsh whisper. "This is suicide!"

Ben's voice seemed to creep up behind her, making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. "This is a terrible idea, Detective."

"Don't call me that here, Benny. There's no way we can make an arrest like this. I think it was staged this way on purpose. Somebody knew we were going to be here, told them, they picked off our best bet at crippling them, then hid in a crowd. But two can play at this game." Her boot touched the edge of the ramp.

Ben and Tu'Kira were both staring at her, eyes desperate and pleading. "Don't do this, Kae," the Chiss pleaded.

"I have to, Tu'Kira. I'm responsible. It was _my _case, and I let both of them slip through my fingers on several occasions. They aren't getting away with this, even if I have to go to Telos and hunt them myself." She started to back onto the ramp, forcing them to follow her if they wanted to bring her back. "What happened to the others?"

Ben shook his head. "They only got Hennessy. They're expecting us to bring you back and all go back to Uscru to report back to the chief."

Kae gazed steadily at him, letting the surging movement of the crowd pull her into the drop ship. Tu'Kira still held her arm, and was being pulled up alongside her. At that moment, lost in the voices of dozens of aliens, she couldn't hear the whirring of Ben's cybernetic arm. Too bad. At that moment she could have used someone a little more mechanical in their methods.

"I'm going," she said, and the finality was thick in her voice.

Tu'Kira gave her one last desperate stare, then shoved her forward. "You aren't going without the evidence," he muttered, and pushed her up the ramp, his hand on her back for guidance.

Ben sighed loudly, almost to the point of becoming a groan. "This is a terrible idea," he said again, and followed them into the drop ship.

They were immediately lost in the bustle of the alien refugees. Tu'Kira grabbed a fistful of her shirt and yanked her hard enough that she tripped backward over someone's foot—or tail?—and collapsed into his chest, but she was grateful for his presence, if not his brusque attitude.

"Where's Benny?" she asked, groping blindly in the sudden stuffy dimness until she found something to hold onto. It felt like plastic, and she figured she found the Telosian spice box, tied to his belt. It would do as a handhold until she found something better. She only hoped he wasn't too disturbed by their proximity.

"We'll find him once we have more room," Tu'Kira replied crisply. "Just shut up for now, okay? You got us into this mess, so don't get us killed by shouting bullshit about our names and ranks."

She nodded, knowing he would feel the movement against his chest, shut her eyes, and waited.

—

Kae wasn't sure how much time had passed as they travelled in the drop ship. The quarters were so tightly packed that it was impossible for her to reach her comlink to check the time, and there were no visible clocks that she could see. the lights were dim in the hold where she stood, pressed between an irate Chiss co-worker, a malodorous Togruta with twitchy lekku that kept swatting her head, and a wraith of a Human woman who was continuously muttering to herself about the lies of the media—most notably HoloNet News—and how the Jedi Civil War was completely fabricated by the press.

It took longer than normal to exit airspace, likely due to the fact that the drop ship was crammed to the brim with illegal refugees trying to flee one of Coruscant's scummiest neighbourhoods. Kae didn't blame them. She would have wanted to leave the Crimson Corridor if she lived there. Whoever piloted the drop ship probably had to navigate space traffic, as well as work their way through customs and officials without letting on that their cargo hold was full of refugees and criminals.

It felt like several hours had passed in dull silence before the drop ship shuddered and came to a halt. Even if they had been scooped up by the tractor beam of some suspicious Republic cruiser—and really, that was the best option of them all—Kae was relieved that they had finally come to a stop.

Another quarter hour passed before the door to the drop ship hissed open. As soon as painfully bright fluorescent light shone into the dark cargo hold, the refugees began shoving toward the door, grumbling to themselves and cursing at their neighbours in their desperation to leave not only the hold, but Coruscant herself.

"Recitation: Do not move until instructed. If you attempt to exit the drop ship into the _Kobalos _without expressed permission, you will be shot on sight."

A robotic voice, mechanical and staccato. Kae tried to stand on her toes to peer over the heads of the mess of criminals surging around her, but it was impossible. The Togruta was in the way.

"It's a Hunter-Killer droid," Tu'Kira whispered in her ear. All anger was gone from his voice, and exhaustion reigned; he was too tired to be upset with her rash behaviour. "Grey plating that looks reinforced with armour. Probably beskar, from the looks of things. Holding what looks like an RT-97 heavy blaster rifle with a _lot _of illegal modifications. Do as it says."

Kae nodded and reached back, feeling for his hand. He gave her fingers a quick squeeze, and they continued to wait.

Several more minutes flew by, then the same mechanical voice said, "Order: Move single file from the drop ship into the hangar of the _Kobalos_. Warning: Any sudden movements will result in your death. If you value your pitifully short mortal lives at all, you will follow instructions without hesitation."

With that, the refugees began filing slowly from the drop ship, moving like the undead Lee always compared the Luka family to. Once the Togruta and Human began to shuffle forward, Kae followed, holding onto Tu'Kira's hand to keep him from getting lost in the crowd.

They stepped into the light of the hangar and Kae's jaw dropped. The farthest she had ever been from home, her birthplace of Coruscant, had been a family vacation to the beaches on Alderaan—one planet away. They had taken a luxury cruiser, courtesy of her mother's boss, so she had never even set foot on an interplanetary star cruiser. The hangar bay was as large as the cruiser to Alderaan, possibly larger, and carried several other drop ships and fighters. Everything was sterile steel, with harsh white lights coating the ceiling scaring any and all shadows from the vast room.

Kae and Tu'Kira joined the end of the line and stood with the other refugees facing the Hunter-Killer droid and four armed aliens—one Human man, scarred and wearing a ragtag assortment of armour; a Trandoshan drumming his claws on the hilt of his vibroblade as he growled and surveyed the criminals; a pale yellow Twi'lek woman with tattoos stippling her lekku and face; and an Iridonian-Zabrak with two cranial horns that had the tips broken off, jagged and sharp.

As the rest of the refugees emptied from the drop ship and hobbled into the line, Kae stole a glance to the right and spotted Ben standing with his hands folded in front of him a few metres away, crammed between two corpulent humanoids. Upon seeing him safe and sound, tired but otherwise unharmed, Kae breathed a small sigh and returned her gaze to the droid standing stiffly ahead of the line.

Its legs were held shoulder-width apart, with the heavy blaster rifle clutched in metal fingers, ready to drop, aim and shoot in a single movement if need be. Orange photoreceptors flickered as its head swivelled, taking in the line of criminals in front of it. Menacing, from stance to oddly emotional voice: it practically screamed "assassin" by its very appearance. Certainly whoever designed the Hunter-Killer models knew what they were doing.

"It's an _Interdictor_-class cruiser, judging from the style alone," Tu'Kira whispered, bending down until his unruly waves tickled her cheek. "Very specific in the details of their design. These things are huge. We'll have a lot of places to hide if necessary."

Kae arched one eyebrow in an attempt to keep her face neutral while the droid's sensors passed over her. "You know far too much about ships," she replied calmly.

"You'll appreciate it when I keep us from getting caught by our perps before we're ready."

"It's not an insult. I'm impressed."

They fell silent as soon as the Trandoshan pulled back his lips from his sharp teeth and shot them a dark glower.

The refugees stood in shuffling silence for another hour as a man and a woman in crisp white uniforms and datapads patrolled back and forth in front of the line, taking down names, species, genders, birthdates, and all other necessary information for keeping track of everyone.

When the woman stopped in front of Kae and demanded her name, she didn't even think before blurting her mother's. "Anoukkmaris Luka," she said, stammering just a little.

The woman grunted, "How do you spell it?"

After Kae slowly spelled it out for her, the woman typed something into the datapad and asked, "Sex?"

"Female."

"Species?"

"Nagai."

"Homeworld?"

"Coruscant."

"Primary language?"

"Galactic Basic."

"Any secondary languages?"

Kae hesitated for just a second before replying, "No."

She felt Tu'Kira's eyes on her. He knew her lie was blatant. He had heard her speak several languages while dealing with perps at headquarters, men and women who had never learned Basic.

When the woman finished questioning her, she moved over to Tu'Kira, who had basic, truthful answers: Tu'Kira Oudo, male, Chiss, Naboo, Galactic Basic, Cheunh as well as Bocce and Minnisiat. Satisfied, the woman continued down the line, and once she was out of earshot, Tu'Kira murmured, "And who is Anoukkmaris?"

"It's my mother's name. It just came out. I just… if Lan Renner, one of the suspects, finds out I'm here by my name… we met, we played pazaak. We talked about me and my family and my race. He knows who I am, Tu'Kira. I can't let on that I'm here."

"Did you tell him you were a cop?"

"Hey!" a voice echoed across the hangar, and the two instantly hushed. The yellow Twi'lek was scowling at them, tattooed eyebrows furrowed together. "Whatever you two are whispering about there, shut the fuck up."

The droid made a noise that could be easily interpreted as a laugh. "Query: And what would the punishment for continued tongue-wagging be, Mistress Xiaanf'en?"

The Twi'lek cackled, giving Kae a perfect view of her artificially sharpened teeth. "Shooting them in the kneecaps?"

"Suggestion: Forcefully breaking their kneecaps?"

The woman folded her arms across her chest, sharp nails digging into her bare arms, and walked over to the droid, her dark eyes glittering in the painfully bright light. "Cutting out their tongues to stop the wagging forever?" she hissed, sneering at them.

Tu'Kira shifted nervously, and Kae felt something clump up in her throat. The two officials were busy taking notes from other criminals to pay them any heed, and the Trandoshan, Zabrak and Human were merely watching curiously. They were either bounty hunters or mercenaries, most likely the former, paid the best price to bully refugees into submission.

"Enthusiastic agreement: I very much approve of this suggestion, Mistress Xiaanf'en. However, may I suggest breaking their kneecaps as well? It is very amusing to watch you flesh things writhe and crawl."

"Enough, droid," the female officer snapped. She tucked her datapad under her arm and marched purposefully toward it. "Fen, step back." She shot the Twi'lek a stern look, which was returned with a baring of sharpened teeth, before the woman nodded and retreated into the line of armed aliens. "Strazzo, let's go. He'll be waiting." She jerked her chin at the other officer, and the two turned on their heels and strode away with long strides, quickly crossing the massive hangar bay.

This appeared to be a cue for the droid, for it raised its blaster rifle and pointed it toward one of the nearer doors. "Recitation: The refugees are to be placed in the cargo bay for storage until we reach our destination. Warning: Commit any sudden movement, attempt to flee, or speak out of turn, and you will be shot without hesitation."

The yellow Twi'lek leered maliciously at Kae and Tu'Kira, and the droid seemed to notice, for it then intoned, "Addition: And we will most certainly enjoy doing it."

The woman slunk up beside them as they turned to the right and began to lumber toward the door, herded by the Trandoshan and Iridonian-Zabrak. Matching Kae's pace, she reached out and stroked one filthy talon against the sharp angle of her cheekbone, forcing a horrified shudder down the Nagai's spine.

"Stay sweet, corpse. Though I don't want to kill you yet, I'll love every second of it if I have to," she hissed, exposing her whittled teeth. Her lekku twitched against Kae's shoulder in a manner that reminded her of Lee when he was trying to be angry with her and failing, and she suddenly realized she desperately missed him. She was going off-planet. He would have no idea what happened to her. Nobody knew. None of the other men from the stakeout team, or the chiefs of Uscru or Zi-Kree. She, Tu'Kira and Ben had simply vanished from the Crimson Corridor without a sound.

After a sharp order from the droid, laced with sadistic humour that made the Twi'lek shriek with laughter, the worm-head backed away to the end of the line, across from the Human bounty hunter. Left alone with that stinging touch on her cheek, Kae bit her lip to keep from crying out. It was in that moment that she realized the gravity of her own impassioned, foolish mistake, and the ship seemed to swallow her whole.


	9. Anya Tsi

THE _KOBALOS_ STAR CRUISER

HYPERSPACE

The refugees could pick whichever sleeping roll they wanted once they reached the cargo hold of the _Kobalos_, after a security check took all weapons and other unauthorized material. It was a massive room, with thin mattresses and quilts placed all over the floor with only narrow paths between them. Armed men and women stalked the catwalks forming a lattice over the hold; they occasionally shouted insults to the criminals hurrying to family and friends and choosing beds, obviously bored with their patrol.

The droid and bounty hunters vanished as soon as the last of the refugees slipped into the hold and the heavy bay door was locked behind them.

Kae and Tu'Kira found Ben almost immediately, and secured three bedrolls in a corner of the room far from the door they entered in. Once they were settled, they huddled together, Kae gripping Ben's mechanical hand for some semblance of normality. Tu'Kira quietly told Ben the type of ship they were in and its promise of hiding places, then, with a covert glance at Kae, added that for whatever reason, she was no longer Kaekoletai, but Anoukkmaris.

Ben's brow twisted into a frown. "Your mother?"

"It just popped into my head. Whatever. It's trivial. I'm sure most of the people around us are under assumed names. To the crew of this ship and the refugees, I'll be Maris. All well?

Ben shrugged, and though Tu'Kira made a sour face, he acquiesced.

"It'll be weird getting used to. What if we accidentally call you Kae?"

"Nobody here can speak Nagaian, I can guarantee you that—not even me. If someone knows me as Maris and hears you call me Kae, we can just pretend it's a variant nickname of Anoukkmaris. It does have a double letter 'K' after all. My parents used to speak it around Tory and me if they wanted to keep something a secret from us. I know how it should sound, even if I can't read or write or speak or understand it to save my life. Others won't know I don't know it, except the officers, maybe, or that one that questioned me, and I can just fake it. My name has variant nicknames," she added, shrugging, as she adjusted the fit of her fingers between Ben's metal ones under his glove. The feel of it made her uncomfortable—mostly because of her brother's tense history with the military and how Ben lost his arm—but she was too desperate for contact with him to mind too much. "My parents sometimes call me Tai. Friends at school occasionally called me Ko, just to mix it up. And my brother's name is Krantenoktor, and even though we call him Tory, he's been called Kran, Anton, and even Kae, just like me."

Ben's eyebrows shot up, though Tu'Kira was still frowning. "I gather Nagaian is a very versatile language."

"I wouldn't know. But we all have ridiculous names that we need to shorten if we want anyone else to be able to pronounce them. Mum's been Maris mostly, but also Ana, Mary, and, of course, Kae. Our family likes our letter 'K'."

"Father too?" Tu'Kira asked curiously.

Nerves frazzled and frayed by the hectic day, with exhaustion creeping control of her brain and functions, Kae didn't even hesitate before vomiting up more information about a race and family history that she normally kept, well, in her family. "His name is Eiri. He can't really be shortened much as it is. But his is a family name, passed down through generations of men when he still lived on Nagi, so his mother didn't even get a chance to give him one of the more typical, longer Nagai names." Kae blinked, felt like the world was closing on her and her eyelids were made of lead, and leaned on Tu'Kira's shoulder for support to stay upright.

She shut her eyes, giving into temptation, and relaxed against Tu'Kira. How nice his shoulder was as a pillow.

"Were you and Tory both born on Coruscant, or just you?" one of the men asked, but she wasn't sure which.

"Both. We're twins. Everyone thinks he's older just because he's so tall. But really, I think I'm a few minutes older… my mother doesn't remember. She doesn't think it matters."

The men whispered together for a moment, but Kae was too tired to bother listening in. Then an arm wrapped around her, and her fingers slipped away from Ben's. "So why did your parents leave Nagi? They've been on Coruscant for over thirty years."

Kae nearly fell when she gave a particularly heavy breath, and her eyes jolted open in surprise. She blinked at Ben and Tu'Kira, the former of whom looked guiltily away. "What? No. They've been here for almost exactly thirty years. My mother was pregnant with my brother and I when she and my father left. And it's none of your business, Tu'Kira Oudo," she added, finally registering the voice that had spoken. "Why did _your _people leave the land of the blue and red?"

He grinned at that, and she noticed belatedly that his eyes were such a pale red that they were almost a saturated pink hue with a red tinge, and his usually luxuriously blue flesh was the colour of a nice summer day. Filtered air, stale and recycled, going through the ship, not giving his chameleon pigments enough oxygen to thrive.

"My people, for as far back as I can trace, have always lived on either Naboo or Hapes." He gave a little shudder. "I hate my Hapan relatives. So narcissistic and oddly enough, can't see in the dark enough to save their lives." One dark brow arched, and he squeezed Kae's shoulder. So it was him who had pulled her close. "I don't know when my family crossed over from Csilla. Last I heard, they were wintering an ice age. Glad I'm not there."

Ben rolled his eyes and shuffled over to his bedroll. "_I'm _glad I'm not one of your people," he remarked under his breath. "Aliens. Mine have been on Core Worlds since the beginning of the Republic. And I don't want to hear one of your tasteless jokes, _Maris_," he snapped, shooting her with a tired and angry glower.

Kae frowned at him, and remained silent until he rolled over and quickly fell asleep.

With armed guards patrolling the ceiling catwalks and perimeter of the hold, they weren't given much free reign over where they could wander. Kae was certain they had already been aboard for several hours, with several more to go, as Telos was in the Outer Rim. Ben and Tu'Kira had fallen asleep almost immediately, but too many thoughts and anxieties were rushing through Kae's head for her to be granted the same luxury. She sat atop her bedroll, arms holding her knees to her chest, and she idly surveyed the refugees in a sorry attempt of clearing her mind.

The Coruscant Security Force would have no choice but to report her, Ben, and Tu'Kira missing until she could get an intergalactic message to headquarters. Their faces might even end up on HoloNet News. Her mother and father would be beside themselves with grief; Tory would probably do what he always did when upset—or joyous, content, angry—and would end up abusing any and all intoxicants he could get his hands on, and he would most likely be joined by Lee. She didn't know what family—if any—Ben or Tu'Kira had on Coruscant, but this wouldn't be easy for anyone.

Perhaps once they reached Telos, she could recruit the Telos Security Force, send a message to the CSF, and get their help in apprehending Lan Renner and Quira, if they were truly her perps.

Eyes bleary and heavy, Kae scanned the room, but it was too much to hope that there would be a redheaded Corellian/Mandalorian and Cathar in the sea of eerily silent refugees. She had a hunch the sadistic Hunter-Killer droid was the same he had accompanying him in Taeg's, and if it was in charge of the refugees, then the hustle and bustle of shipping the desperate of Coruscant to Telos was a ruse for them to leave undetected by authorities, and allow them to continue the operation they were running without trouble.

Kae sighed and briskly rubbed her face with both palms. This was a mistake she would never live down, because her pride wouldn't let her allow them to escape to Telos and become the problem of the TSF.

Goddamned pride.

Just as she was about to delve deeper into her own sorrows, a Coruscanti voice suddenly broke the silence by shouting from the hold doors, "Hey! What are you doing over there?"

Curious murmurs rose up among the refugees. Kae perked up with the rest of them.

When he received no answer, the officer called, "Hey! I'm asking you a question! What are you doing?"

A thin female voice cut through the air after a tense pause. "What does it _look _like I'm doing?"

"You have contraband—unauthorized foodstuffs brought from Coruscant!" The officer pulled away from the door and the refugees nearest him silently moved out of the way to give him room to pass. "Hand it over at once."

The crowd split further, and Kae was surprise to see that the officer was addressing a young woman less than ten metres from where she sat.

She was young, no older than Kae, with porcelain skin, breakable and fragile beneath a false bravado; her hair was flawless white, purer than snow, and fell to her shoulders, framing her face in awkward, jagged strands. It was her gaze that really caught Kae's attention. Not only were her eyes silver, several shades paler than Kae's and almost terrible to look at, but they were filled with such tender innocence and despair that they made Kae's heart break.

The woman was clutching a grubby paper bag to her chest, and was clothed in plain garments with frayed hems.

Holding out the hand that wasn't tightly gripping a standard-issue blaster pistol, the officer growled, "Give it to me."

She stared up at him a moment longer, then carefully said, "No."

Pandemonium ensued. People shrieked as a shot was fired; the crowd jerked back, collectively startled and horrified; a man screeched horribly as the scent of singed flesh filled the room.

Once the screaming stopped, the pale woman was still on the floor, with one hand held out, fingers splayed. The officer was sprawled on the floor in front of her, a small pillar of smoke issuing from a scorch mark on his forehead.

A beat of dead quiet.

Then all blaster muzzles were pointed on her and six officers, including the Hunter-Killer droid, were hauling her to her feet and slapping cuffs around her wrists. Everyone openly gawked as she was led through the room in silence.

Someone seated near Kae started to mumble, "So much for shooting to kill without hesitation," but was interrupted by an innocent, childish voice.

"A Jedi, Mama, a Jedi! Did you see that?"

All eyes turned on the young boy who was standing up and pointing at the woman as she was shuffled through the hold door. He was grinning shamelessly. His mother hastily grabbed him and pulled him back to his bedroll, hissing angrily that he shouldn't go around shouting about Jedi.

The doors shut and locked as soon as the group of officers left with the white-haired girl, and instantly the refugees began to whisper amongst each other. Public belief that the Jedi had either died or gone into hiding after the Jedi Civil War, or were mysteriously vanishing made everyone distrust the very idea of a Force user, due to common confusion between Jedi and Sith.

Kae listened curiously to the words floating around her. That a Jedi had been hiding amongst them horrified most of those gossiping, because hadn't they tried to overthrow the Republic during that war?

She shook her head, reminded of Tory and his near-conscription to that very war, and the one before it, and fell back on her bedroll. While everyone else was hushed as they discussed the Jedi who killed an officer, she couldn't get the image of the sorrow in the woman's pale silver eyes out of her mind, and she wondered what it was that could drive a someone like that to flee the seat of the Republic on a drug ship.

—

An hour later, the refugees were all forced awake and shepherded through the door once more. Sleeping had cured Ben of his ill humour, and the three of them trudged along at the end of the line as they left the hold and began filing down the immaculately clean corridors of the ship. The droid and bounty hunters were nowhere in sight until they reached another large room—a mess hall, judging by the long rows of durasteel tables and plain benches. Along the left side of the room was a cafeteria line, from which a strange, plastic smell emanated. Some seats were already occupied on the far side of the hall, and a large clock displayed on the wall above the far door was the only adornment. From what she knew of military schedules, it was an hour of shift change on the ship.

Once they were all shuffled into the mess hall, the droid and bounty hunters seemed to materialize out of nowhere. The officers leading them wandered over to the cafeteria line, leaving the refugees in the care of the more violent hired hands. Each person was handed a tray and they slowly moved down the line. Spoonfuls of colourless sludge were slopped onto their trays, then they were allowed to go to the tables for an hour of free mingling before returning to the hold.

As Kae was carrying her tray to a table, flanked by Ben and Tu'Kira, she caught a flash of white across the room. "Hold on." She held out her hand and grabbed Tu'Kira's shoulder to make him stop. "Can you see that over there?"

He tilted his head back and peered over the heads of the other refugees. "A girl with white hair surrounded by guards. What of it?"

"Okay." Kae tugged on his hand and they followed Ben to one of the tables, one without many people nearby. "You were asleep when it happened. That woman had food with her in the hold, which apparently isn't allowed, and when an officer tried to take it from her and she refused, he fired a shot and she must have deflected it."

Tu'Kira snorted as he dropped his tray on the table and slumped onto the bench. Kae sat beside him, facing Ben. "How? He's just a really bad shot?"

Ben's face grew stony. "The Force," he whispered. "The Jedi, they can use it to deflect blaster bolts. Very impressive, if a bit daunting and hard to know where they're going to land." He shook his head and idly pushed the sludge around his tray. Kae watched him for a moment. He had served with Jedi in the Mandalorian Wars. He had seen their power firsthand against the Mandalorian warriors.

Tu'Kira's brows shot up beneath loose black curls on his forehead. "So other than a Jedi—or Sith—what is she?"

"Echani, I think," Kae murmured, leaning to the side to better see the woman. The officers around her were casually pointing their blasters at her as she took her time in eating. "One of them came into the Uscru CSF once, back when I first started. He got into a fight in a bar, looked like her. But she's got to be some kind of Near-Human, if not that. Hm."

"Don't worry about it. We should just lay low until we get to Telos. Try not to do anything stupid." Tu'Kira smirked and turned back to his food, leaving Kae staring at the Force user, hunched over her food, white face oddly expressionless.

They sat in silence for the next hour, hungry but unwilling to touch the sludge on their trays. The only joyous sounds came from the far side of the hall, where the officers were contentedly chatting and cracking jokes before their shifts ended and they returned to the barracks. Graveyard stillness hovered above the refugees like a black cloud until the clock reached the hour and the armed guards began rounding them up to file them back to the cargo hold.

Kae was just passing through the door from the mess hall when long fingers with sharp nails wrapped around her arm and tugged her from the line. She stumbled, nearly fell, but was caught by a pair of strong, pale yellow arms, the colour of weak sunlight. At first she was grateful, then the horror moved through her as she realized her saviour was the Twi'lek bounty hunter, Xiaanf'en.

The woman grinned, bearing her sharp little teeth. "Fancy meeting you here, corpse," she purred, moving Kae so they were facing each other. "Shame we didn't get to talk much earlier. Humans are always interrupting things, aren't they?"

"Xiaan. What are you doing to that woman?"

Kae's heart squeezed painfully, and she shut her eyes, desperately wishing it was all a horrible dream and she had just got really drunk with Lee and this was the alcohol trying to teach her to be good.

Xiaanf'en's sharp nails dug into Kae's arms through her shirt, and she pulled her in close for an awkward embrace. Kae grimaced as the woman began stroking her hair, forcing her to press her face into large alien breasts. "What is it?" the Twi'lek demanded, her voice instantly slipping from husky and seductive to flat and irritated.

"Hell, Xiaan, you got her suffocating in your tits. Do what you want with them, but don't kill 'em before we reach Telos."

Footsteps faded away, and the Twi'lek yanked on Kae's hair, forcing her head back. "I like you, corpse," she said softly. "There's something about you."

"I—I have a name," Kae stammered. She knew she shouldn't be encouraging the woman, but it bothered her when anyone—save Lee—called her a corpse. He was the only one who used it as a term of endearment. "Don't call me a corpse."

Xiaanf'en laughed. It was a little raspy and all seductive. Kae saw the reason so many Twi'leki women were sold into slavery as dancers and prostitutes. They were almost obscenely sexual, from their gorgeous forms to the way they moved, and even the way they spoke.

"You have some nerve. I like that. It seems we need a formal introduction then." She ran the tips of her sharp fingernails down Kae's cheek. "I'm Xiaanf'en." Her tongue flicked out over her tattooed lips. Kae shivered. "Or Xiaan Fen, if you take into account my being banished from my clan. So who're you?"

Kae opened her mouth, but a voice behind her called, "Xiaan, are you bringin' her back later?"

"Aye, Bol," she called, sneering over Kae's shoulder. "Head on without."

"Will do."

Kae stared into the Twi'lek's fathomless dark eyes. Something evil seemed to be lurking in their depths. "I-I'm K-K—Anoukkmaris," she mumbled, remembering at the last second that she was trying to go under an assumed name. Her knees were trembling violently, and she was almost grateful the woman was holding her upright. She was certain she would have fallen otherwise.

"Little Anou," Xiaanf'en purred. Her lekku twitched and writhed against Kae's shoulders. She bit her lip to keep from squealing, and her knees finally gave out. She fell into the woman's chest, and felt the rumble of laughter from beneath Xiaanf'en's ribs. Her body was reacting to Xiaanf'en the same it would to Lee, and she hated herself for it. The lekku touching her skin, not just adding words but moving with excitement and anticipation. The Ryl accent, the nicknames…

A curse flowed through Kae's lips, but she had no idea what she even said.

"What are you?"

She was vaguely aware that the woman spoke. "N-Nagai."

Finally, Xiaanf'en pulled back and her powerful scent of musk retreated. Kae let out a shaky breath and let her jelly knees take her to the ground. "Good. I hate Humans. I knew you were different. Only a Near-Human would have the balls to talk out of place earlier. Come here."

Kae was hauled back to her feet and, with the Twi'lek's hand tightly gripping hers, she was led unresisting through the mess hall to the far door beneath the clock. The ship around them was silent and cold. Kae barely watched to see where they were going; terrified thoughts kept swirling through her whirlwind mind. Was this fucking crazy Twi'lek going to kill her? Rape her? Both? Or did she see through the ruse of Anoukkmaris Luka, somehow know who Kaekoletai was, and was she bringing her straight to Lan Renner and Quira?

They stopped about ten minutes later. Kae looked up from her dirty combat boots to see that she was brought to a discreet door in a part of the ship she hadn't seen before, guarded by two soldiers in full armour, with not only blaster pistols but vibroblades as well. They nodded at Xiaanf'en as she approached, but said nothing.

"You're staying here for now, Anou." Xiaanf'en's fingers danced across the back of her neck. Kae grimaced but managed to keep from making any terrified noise. "An easier place for me to find you later. Take care of her," she said, glaring at the two soldiers.

She pushed Kae forward. As she stumbled, the guards caught her, and one held her still while the other quickly entered a code into a keypad beside the door. It hissed open, and she was shoved inside without a word.

With an inelegant squawk, Kae toppled to the ground and immediately bumped into something, which clattered across the floor. She started to lift herself, but stopped in a push-up position when a quiet voice intoned, "Did you kill someone too?"

Kae lifted her gaze from the cold, sterile floor to see a young woman in dirty, frayed trousers, a matching tunic and dark robe sitting cross-legged against the wall in front of her. Messy white hair framing a ghastly pale face, and a pair of disturbing, mournful silver eyes: it was the Force user taken from the cargo hold for killing an officer.

Kae quickly looked down at her hands. She couldn't bear to see the sadness in the woman's gaze. "No. I don't really know why I'm here." She sat up and looked around the room. It was small, with a separate partitioned bathroom and a blanket on the floor for sleeping. Bright fluorescent lights banished all shadows and made obvious several old stains and dust prints left by cleaning supplies. They were in a closet. Classy.

"Who are you?" the woman asked, pulling her feet closer to her as if afraid Kae's touch would kill her.

"Anoukkmaris Luka. Maris. Who are you?" Kae dared a glance. On the left side of her face was a puckered pink line that cut across her cheek. An old scar from a burn, most likely.

"Anya Tsi." She didn't blink nearly often enough. Kae looked down at her hands. That was likely part of the reason why her gaze was so frightful. "Are you a zombie?"

"What's a zombie? And no. I'm Nagai. There aren't many of us outside the Unknown Regions."

The woman nodded and pursed her lips. Kae wondered if she had ever smiled before. "Are you a refugee?"

"I came here on the drop ship, if that's what you mean."

"Who put you in here then? Why are you not with the rest?"

Though Kae hadn't expected the sorrowful woman to be so talkative, certainly it was a fair question, as Kae had just intruded on her privacy. "The yellow Twi'lek bounty hunter. Xiaanf'en."

She nodded as if she understood completely, then pulled her dark grey robes tighter around her and continued to stare forward.

Kae pushed herself back until she was leaning against the wall exactly opposite the woman. Stretching her legs out in a feeble attempt to get comfortable, she folded her hands in her lap and looked at the woman's forehead. Her eyes were too daunting. "Are you a Jedi?" Might as well be blunt. She was due for a few questions herself. She didn't really want to accidentally piss off this austere woman and get herself obliterated by the Force.

To her surprise, the woman's mouth curled up into a sly smirk. "Something like that."

Kae decided she didn't want to know what that meant, and settled back against the wall to wait for the next time Xiaanf'en chose to release her. While normally she would have cherished the presence of another sentient being, the coldness and despair enveloping from Anya Tsi was a black hole, sucking in all happiness until Kae felt nothing at all.


End file.
